Relationships Between Rapid Urbanization and Extreme Summer Precipitation Over the Sichuan–Chongqing Area of China

Abstract

China has undergone rapid urbanization over the past few decades, and accordingly, changes have occurred in the extreme precipitation events. However, few studies have focused on the relationships between rapid urbanization and extreme precipitation events in southwest China, particularly in the Sichuan–Chongqing area, which has a complex topography and has experienced rapid urbanization over the past few decades. This is the first study to analyze the impact of urbanization on the amount, frequency, and intensity of extreme summer (June–August) precipitation events over the past 30 years. Our results indicate that extreme precipitation events primarily occurred in the urban-dominated Sichuan basin, particularly during the fast urbanization development stage (FUDS) of 1994–2015. Extreme precipitation amounts and intensities increased during the FUDS, implying the greater probability of individual precipitation events developing into heavy or extreme events in a particular area. In addition, the probability distribution functions of the occurrence and volume of strong convective events significantly increased during the FUDS. Finally, the annual increase in urban-scale land surface air temperature, increase in wet convection, and changes in wind speed are identified as essential factors leading to extreme precipitation events in this region.

Case Study on the Evolution and Precipitation Characteristics of Southwest Vortex in China: Insights from FY-4A and GPM Observations

“…MEAN is obtained by dividing the cumulative value of the product detected by the satellite by the number of products in a specific area, as shown in Equation (2). It reflects the number of measures of the product data centralization trend.…”

“…Meteorologists have long been focused on understanding the formation, development, and flood disasters caused by this weather phenomenon. In recent years, in the context of global warming [1], extreme precipitation events triggered by the SWV have become more frequent, resulting in significant human and economic losses [2]. For example, from 7 to 11 July 2013, an extreme precipitation event in northern Sichuan registered a total precipitation of 415.9 mm, impacting 15 townships and 42,571 individuals [3].…”

“…nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_1CGPMGMI_07/summary, assessed on 11 October 2021. (2) The satellite data used in this study were product 2A.DPR_FS of the GPM version 07 dual-frequency joint inversion at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_2ADPR_07/summary, assessed on 11 October 2021.…”

Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Hourly-Scale Extreme Precipitation in the Sichuan Basin and Its Impact on Normalized Difference Vegetation Index Values

“…In contemporary studies focused on extreme precipitation events, a diverse array of data sources such as satellite remote sensing data [10][11][12], radar data [13][14][15], climate and meteorological model simulations [16][17][18][19], ground-based observations [10,20,21], and the fusion of multisource heterogeneous data [22][23][24] have been increasingly utilized. Most research methodologies commonly employ the internationally recognized percentile method to define the threshold for extreme precipitation at various monitoring stations [4,[25][26][27].…”

Multi-Source Precipitation Data Merging for High-Resolution Daily Rainfall in Complex Terrain

“…Researchers have constructed specific merging models tailored to the characteristics of different study areas. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) [11], optimum interpolation (OI) [12], regression kriging interpolation (RK) [13], Bayesian model averaging (BMA) [14], and other techniques have been employed. Although considerable progress has been made in multi-source precipitation merging, most existing methods primarily concentrate on merging satellite and gauge data with a relatively limited number of data sources involved in the merging process.…”