Diurnal Cycle of Rainfall Associated with Landfalling Tropical Cyclones in China from Rain Gauge Observations

Abstract

AbstractThe diurnal variation of rainfall over China associated with landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) is investigated using hourly rain gauge observations obtained from 2425 conventional meteorological stations in China. Records between 12 h prior to landfall and 12 h after landfall of 450 landfalling TCs in China from 1957 to 2014 are selected as samples. The harmonic analysis shows an obvious diurnal signal in TC rainfall with a rain-rate peak in the early morning and a minimum in the afternoon. The diurnal cycle in the outer region (between 400- and 900-km radii from the storm center) is found to be larger than in the core region (within 400 km of the storm center). This could be attributed to the effect of land on the inner core of the storms as the diurnal cycle is distinct in the core region well before landfall. As the result of this diurnal cycle, TCs making landfall at night tend to have cumulative precipitation, defined as the precipitation cumulated from the time at landfall to 12 h after landfall, about 30% larger than those making landfall around noon or afternoon. Moreover, the radial propagation of the diurnal cycle in TC rain rate, which has been a controversial phenomenon in some previous studies with remote sensing observations, was not present in this study that is based on rain gauge observations. Results also show that the diurnal signal has little dependence on the storm intensity 12 h prior to landfall.