Spatiotemporally contiguous precipitation events across China: Role of atmospheric rivers and tropical cyclones in heavy precipitation

作者：Zhihua Zhu, Yanpeng Cai, Xuejun Dai, Xiaoyan Bai, Yueying Yang, Xue Li, Zhifeng Yang · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.111426 · 被引用次数：12 · 研究领域：Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research、Climate variability and models、Precipitation Measurement and Analysis

Precipitation events exhibit a spatiotemporal continuity since they move across both space and time, however, the joint spatiotemporal characteristics of precipitation events are often neglected, and the role of Atmospheric rivers (ARs) and tropical cyclones (TCs) in the events has not been systematically explored. To solve these problems, this study seeks to detect and characterize the three-dimensional (latitude + longitude + time) structures of spatiotemporally contiguous precipitation events, distinguish the heavy events associated with ARs or TCs, and systematically explore the different roles of these events. We do so by combining Forward-in-Time algorithm, an object-based physical event detecting algorithm, with TMPA precipitation estimates to detect spatiotemporally contiguous precipitation events over China, and an AR detection technique considering a combination of fixed lower limit and Integrated Water Vapor Transport percentile threshold is adopted to identify ARs. The heavy events are defined to analyze the differences of the events associated with TCs and ARs as a function of precipitation total, duration, and intensity. Results show that approximately half or more of precipitation events are shorter than 6-hour, and the precipitation total of each event is strongly correlated with maximum intensity and average intensity across China. The heavy events normally occur in southern, center, northern, and southwestern regions, where have approximately 10 to 40 heavy ...