Guided by the target of the Paris Agreement of 2015, it is fundamental to identify regional climate responses to global warming of different magnitudes for Southeast Asia (SEA), a tropical region where human society is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Projected changes in indices characterizing precipitation extremes of the 1.5°C and 2°C global warming levels (GWLs) exceeding pre-industrial conditions are analyzed, comparing the reference period with an ensemble of CORDEX simulations. The results show that projected changes in precipitation extreme indices are significantly amplified over the Indochina Peninsula and the Maritime Continent at both GWLs. The increases of precipitation extremes are essentially affected by enhanced convective precipitation. The number of wet and extremely wet days is increasing more abruptly than both the total and daily average precipitation of all wet days, emphasizing the critical risks linked with extreme precipitation. Additionally, significant changes can also be observed between the GWLs of 1.5°C and 2°C, especially over the Maritime Continent, suggesting the high sensitivity of precipitation extremes to the additional 0.5°C GWL increase. The present study reveals the potential influence of both 1.5°C and 2°C GWLs on regional precipitation over SEA, highlights the importance of restricting mean global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial conditions and provides essential information on manageable climate adaptation and mitigation strategies for the developing countries in SEA.

Fourteen-month precipitation measurements from a second-generation PARSIVEL disdrometer deployed in Beijing, northern China, were analyzed to investigate the microphysical structure of raindrop size distribution and its implications on polarimetric radar applications. Rainfall types are classified and analyzed in the domain of median volume diameter D0 and the normalized intercept parameter Nw. The separation line between convective and stratiform rain is almost equivalent to rain rate at 8.6 mm h–1 and radar reflectivity at 36.8 dBZ. Convective rain in Beijing shows distinct seasonal variations in log10Nw–D0 domain. X-band dual-polarization variables are simulated using the T-matrix method to derive radar-based quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) estimators, and rainfall products at hourly scale are evaluated for four radar QPE estimators using collocated but independent rain gauge observations. This study also combines the advantages of individual estimators based on the thresholds on polarimetric variables. Results show that the blended QPE estimator has better performance than others. The rainfall microphysical analysis presented in this study is expected to facilitate the development of a high-resolution X-band radar network for urban QPE applications.

The extended range temperature prediction is of great importance for public health, energy and agriculture. The two machine learning methods, namely, the neural networks and natural gradient boosting (NGBoost), are applied to improve the prediction skills of the 2-m maximum air temperature with lead times of 1–35 days over East Asia based on the Environmental Modeling Center, Global Ensemble Forecast System (EMC-GEFS), under the Subseasonal Experiment (SubX) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The ensemble model output statistics (EMOS) method is conducted as the benchmark for comparison. The results show that all the post-processing methods can efficiently reduce the prediction biases and uncertainties, especially in the lead week 1–2. The two machine learning methods outperform EMOS by approximately 0.2 in terms of the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) overall. The neural networks and NGBoost behave as the best models in more than 90% of the study area over the validation period. In our study, CRPS, which is not a common loss function in machine learning, is introduced to make probabilistic forecasting possible for traditional neural networks. Moreover, we extend the NGBoost model to atmospheric sciences of probabilistic temperature forecasting which obtains satisfying performances.

Beijing, China, is located in a region of complex terrain with high mountain ridges to the northwest and the Bohai Sea to the southeast. The origin of convective storms occurring on the plains can often be traced to the upstream mountains. Under weakly forced conditions, these convective storms most frequently evolve into squall lines (SL) and convective clusters (CC) when reaching the plains. In this study, we analyze 18 SL and 15 CC storm systems and assess their environmental and mesoscale differences between the two phenomena. By analyzing the frequency of convective occurrence for the two types of storms based on composite radar reflectivity, it is found that the high frequencies are located in the south of Beijing for SL and near the center of Beijing for CC. Using storm‐scale reanalysis data produced by a rapid update four‐dimensional variational analysis system that assimilates Doppler radar observations, distinct features of the SL and CC storms are revealed in terms of their convective environments and mesoscale structures, such as cold pool, horizontal wind convergence, and humidity distribution. It is found that low convective inhibition and high low‐level wind speed on the plains are common to both SL and CC, whereas higher vertical shear over the plains and stronger wind speed on both mountains and plains distinguishes SL from CC. We further show that the stronger wind and vertical shear in SL generate stronger and more organized downdrafts, producing a deeper cold pool, strong outflow and convergence, which explains the formation of the high‐frequency center in the south of Beijing. In contrast, the cold pool produced in CC is shallower and weaker, resulting in weaker outflow and convergence and convective activities that are located only in central Beijing.

Bayesian model averaging (BMA) was applied to improve the prediction skill of 1–15-day, 24-h accumulated precipitation over East Asia based on the ensemble prediction system (EPS) outputs of ECMWF, NCEP, and UKMO from the TIGGE datasets. Standard BMA deterministic forecasts were accurate for light-precipitation events but with limited ability for moderate- and heavy-precipitation events. The categorized BMA model based on precipitation categories was proposed to improve the BMA capacity for moderate and heavy precipitation in this study. Results showed that the categorized BMA deterministic forecasts were superior to the standard one, especially for moderate and heavy precipitation. The categorized BMA also provided a better calibrated probability of precipitation and a sharper prediction probability density function than the standard one and the raw ensembles. Moreover, BMA forecasts based on multimodel EPSs outperformed those based on a single-model EPS for all lead times. Comparisons between the two BMA models, logistic regression, and raw ensemble forecasts for probabilistic precipitation forecasts illustrated that the categorized BMA method performed best. For 10–15-day extended-range probabilistic forecasts, the initial BMA performances were inferior to the climatology forecasts, while they became much better after preprocessing the initial data with the running mean method. With increasing running steps, the BMA model generally had better performance for light to moderate precipitation but had limited ability for heavy precipitation. In general, the categorized BMA methodology combined with the running mean method improved the prediction skill of 1–15-day, 24-h accumulated precipitation over East Asia.