During the presummer rainy season (April–June), southern China often experiences frequent occurrences of extreme rainfall, leading to severe flooding and inundations. To expedite the efforts in improving the quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) of the presummer rainy season rainfall, the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) initiated a nationally coordinated research project, namely, the Southern China Monsoon Rainfall Experiment (SCMREX) that was endorsed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as a research and development project (RDP) of the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP). The SCMREX RDP (2013–18) consists of four major components: field campaign, database management, studies on physical mechanisms of heavy rainfall events, and convection-permitting numerical experiments including impact of data assimilation, evaluation/improvement of model physics, and ensemble prediction. The pilot field campaigns were carried out from early May to mid-June of 2013–15. This paper: i) describes the scientific objectives, pilot field campaigns, and data sharing of SCMREX; ii) provides an overview of heavy rainfall events during the SCMREX-2014 intensive observing period; and iii) presents examples of preliminary research results and explains future research opportunities.

Forecast uncertainties and physical mechanisms of a quasi-linear extreme-rain-producing mesoscale convective system (MCS) along the Meiyu front in East China, during the midnight-to-morning hours on 8 July 2007, are studied using ensembles of 24 h convection-permitting simulations with a nested grid spacing of 1.11 km. The simulations reveal a strong sensitivity to uncertainties in the initial state despite the synoptic environment being favorable for heavy rainfall production. Linear changes of a less skillful member's initial state toward that of a skillful member lead to a monotonic improvement in the precipitation simulation, with the most significant contribution arising from changes in the moisture field. Sensitivity to physics parameterizations representing subgrid-scale processes fail to account for the larger simulation errors (missing the MCS) with the physics variation examined but could result in a large spread in the location and amount of accumulative rainfall. A robust feature of the best-performing members that reasonably simulate the MCS-associated heavy rainfall is the presence of a cold dome ahead of the Meiyu front generated by previous convection. The cold dome promotes nocturnal convective initiation by lifting high equivalent potential temperature air in the southwesterly flow to its level of free convection. The skillful members reproduce the convective backbuilding and echo-band training processes that are observed during this event and many other heavy rainfall events over China. In contrast, the less skillful members that miss the development of the MCS either do not simulate the previous convection or produce a cold dome that is too shallow to initiate the MCS.

No abstract