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Decadal long convection-permitting regional climate simulations over eastern China: evaluation of diurnal cycle of precipitation

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Abstract

With a decadal long period (1998–2010) climate simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting model at convection-permitting resolution (4 km) (WRF_CPM), the diurnal cycles of precipitation amount (PA), frequency (PF) and intensity (PI) and their related large-scale atmospheric circulations over eastern China are analyzed. The simulations are further compared against the CN05.1, CMORPH v1.0 and the ECMWF Re-Analysis Interim (ERAIN). Results show that WRF_CPM can reasonably represent the observed seasonal rainfall and the atmospheric circulations. As for the features at a sub-daily scale, WRF_CPM is superior at reproducing the diurnal amplitude of PF that is similar to PA in terms of the spatial distribution. Moreover, the diurnal peak timing of summer PF and PA over the three sub-regions, i.e., North China (NC), Yangtze-Huaihe River basin (YHR) and South China (SC), can be properly reproduced by WRF_CPM. The observed precipitation systems exhibit obvious eastward propagation from the Plateau to its downstream, which may be due to the solenoid circulations associated with the low-level anomalous wind and moisture convergence. However, they are almost overestimated by WRF_CPM and in turn causing overestimated precipitation along YHR. The early morning precipitation in WRF_CPM has a larger fraction than CMORPH, which is related to the overestimated nocturnal low-level jet. Whereas, due to the solar heating and the land-sea breezes, the late-afternoon precipitation peak is mainly located along the coasts of eastern China, which matches well with the vertical motion in WRF_CPM.

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Acknowledgements

National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0606003, 2016YFA0600303, 2018YFC1505803) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41875124, 41775065 and 41775074) jointly fund this work. The numerical calculations in this paper have been done on the computing facilities in the High Performance Computing Center (HPCC) of Nanjing University. The authors also acknowledge with thanks the ECMWF for providing the ERA-interim reanalysis data as driving fields in the simulations, and NOAA’s Climate Precipitation Center (CPC) for providing the CMORPH observational data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mesoscale Severe Weather/Ministry of Education, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Ziyue Guo, Juan Fang, Yi Yang & Jianping Tang

  2. School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Nanjing, China

    Ziyue Guo, Xuguang Sun, Yi Yang & Jianping Tang

  3. CMA-NJU Joint Laboratory for Climate Prediction Studies, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Xuguang Sun & Jianping Tang

  4. Shanghai Typhoon Institute, China Meteorological Administration, Shanghai, China

    Jie Tang

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  1. Ziyue Guo
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Guo, Z., Fang, J., Sun, X. et al. Decadal long convection-permitting regional climate simulations over eastern China: evaluation of diurnal cycle of precipitation. Clim Dyn 54, 1329–1349 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05061-z

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