Statistical Characteristics of Environmental Parameters for Warm Season Short-Duration Heavy Rainfall over Central and Eastern China

Water vapor content, instability, and convergence conditions are the key to short-duration heavy rainfall forecasting. It is necessary to understand the large-scale atmospheric environment characteristics of shortduration heavy rainfall by investigating the distribution of physical parameters for different hourly rainfall intensities. The observed hourly rainfall data in China and the NCEP final analysis (FNL) data during 1 May and 30 September from 2002 to 2009 are used. NCEP FNL data are 6-hourly, resulting in sample sizes of 1573370, 355346, and 11401 for three categories of hourly rainfall (P) of no precipitation (P 0.1 mm h-1), ordinary precipitation (0.1 P 20 mm h-1), and short-duration heavy rainfall (P 20.0 mm h-1), respectively, by adopting a temporal matching method. The results show that the total precipitable water (PWAT) is the best parameter indicating the hourly rainfall intensity. A PWAT of 28 mm is necessary for any short-duration heavy rainfall. The possibility of short-duration heavy rainfall occurrence increases with PWAT, and a PWAT of 59 mm is nearly suffcient. The specific humidity is a better indicator than relative humidity. Both 700and 850-hPa relative humidity greater than 80% could be used to determine whether or not it is going to rain, but could not be used to estimate the rainfall intensity. Temperature and potential pseudo-equivalent temperature are also reasonable indicators of short-duration heavy rainfall. Among the atmospheric instability parameters, the best lifted index (BLI) performs best on the shortduration rainfall discrimination; the next best is the K index (KI). The three rainfall categories are not well recognized by total totals (TT) or the temperature difference between 850 and 500 hPa (DT85). Threequarters of short-duration heavy rainfall occurred with BLI less than -0.9, while no short-duration heavy rainfall occurred when BLI was greater than 2.6. The minimum threshold of KI was 28.1 for short-duration heavy rainfall. The importance of dynamic conditions was well demonstrated by the 925and 850-hPa divergence. The representativeness of 925-hPa divergence is stronger than that of 850 hPa. Three-quarters of short-duration heavy rainfall occurred under a negative divergence environment. However, both the best convective potential energy (BCAPE) and vertical wind shear were unable to discriminate the hourly rainfall intensities.