Reflectivity factor bias caused by radar calibration errors would influence the accuracy of Quantitative Precipitation Estimations (QPE), and further result in spatial discontinuity in Multiple Ground Radars QPE (MGR-QPE) products. Due to sampling differences and random errors, the associated discontinuity cannot be thoroughly solved by the single-radar calibration method. Thus, a multiple-radar synchronous calibration approach was proposed to mitigate the spatial discontinuity of MGR-QPE. Firstly, spatial discontinuity was solved by the intercalibration of adjacent ground radars, and then calibration errors were reduced by referring to the Ku-Band Precipitation Radar (KuPR) carried by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory as a standard reference. Finally, Mosaic Reflectivity and MGR-QPE products with spatial continuity were obtained. Using three S-band operational radars covering the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, this method was evaluated under four representative precipitation events. The result showed that: (1) the spatial continuity of reflectivity factor and precipitation estimation fields was significantly improved after bias correction, and the reflectivity differences between adjacent radars were reduced by 78% and 82%, respectively; (2) the MGR-QPE data were closer to gauge observations with the normalized absolute error reducing by 0.05 to 0.12.

The eastern coastal areas of China span multiple climatic zones, and the impacts of climate warming on their ecological environment show regional differences. In this research, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used as the indicator to characterize the ecological environment, and selected Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Liaoning as its typical research areas. The authors selected the NDVI, average temperature, and precipitation data of the yearly growth season, respectively, from 1982 to 2016. This study adopted the copula functions model based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo to carry out the research of bivariate joint distribution so as to calculate the joint probability, the joint exceedance probability, the joint return period and the co-occurrence return period. The results showed that 1) the temperature and precipitation in the three regions were respectively related to the NDVI sequence showing the characteristic that was correlated at the upper tail and asymptotically independent at the lower tail, which demonstrated that the temperature and precipitation had little effect on NDVI when they reached their minimum values, and the temperature and precipitation had obvious effect on NDVI when they reached their maximum values. 2) The shorter the return period was, the wider the ranges of the climate factor and the NDVI were, showing that when the climate factor was constant, the probability of the NDVI having a shorter return period was higher. The greater the climate factor was, the longer the return period was, indicating that the probability of plant growth inhibition was higher when the climate factor exceeded a certain threshold. 3) The suitable temperature and precipitation for vegetation growth in the three regions gradually decreased from south to north. These results provide some theoretical guidance and scientific foundation for the protection of regional ecological environment and enhance the understanding of the impact of climate change on the ecosystem.

In the present study, the Morrison double-moment cloud microphysics scheme including mass and droplet number concentration of water and ice clouds is implemented into the Chinese mesoscale version of the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System (GRAPES_Meso). Sensitivity experiments of different cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) values are conducted to study the impacts of CCN on cloud microphysical processes and radiation processes in East China. The model evaluation shows that the simulated cloud liquid water path (CLWP) is consistent with that of the National Center for Environment Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis, and the cloud optical depth (COD) and effective radius of cloud water (Rc) are in agreement with those of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets both in regional distribution and magnitudes. These comparisons illustrate the effectiveness of the Morrison scheme for the cloud processes in East China. For the study period of 8 to 12 October 2017, the sensitivity experiments show that with initial CCN number concentration (CCN₀) increasing from 10 to 3000 cm⁻³, the maximum value of daily average Rc decreases by about 63%, which leads to a decrease of cloud-rain conversion rate. Moreover, the maximum value of daily average mixing ratio of cloud water (q_c) increases by 133%, the maximum value of daily average mixing ratio of rain (q_r) decreases by 44%, and the maximum value of daily average CLWP and COD increase by 100% and 150%, respectively. This results in about 65% increasing of the maximum value of daily average cloud downward shortwave radiative forcing (CDSRF) when CCN₀ increases from 10 cm⁻³ to 3000 cm⁻³. The study indicates the important impacts of CCN on cloud properties and radiation effects.

In the field of weather forecasting, improving the accuracy of nowcasting is a highly researched topic, and radar echo extrapolation technology plays a crucial role in this process. Aiming to address the limitations of existing deep learning methods in radar echo extrapolation, this paper proposes a spatio-temporal long short-term memory (LSTM) network model that integrates an attention mechanism and the full-dimensional dynamic convolution technique. The multi-scale spatial and temporal features of radar images can be fully extracted by an efficient multi-scale attention module to enhance the model’s ability to perceive global and local information. The full-dimensional dynamic convolutional module introduces the dynamic attention mechanism in the spatial position and input and output channels of the convolutional kernel, adaptively adjusts the weight of the convolutional kernel, and improves the flexibility and efficiency of feature extraction. Combined with the network constructed by the above modules, the accuracy and time dependence of the model for predicting the strong echo region are significantly improved. Our experiments based on Jiangsu meteorological radar data show that the model achieved excellent results in terms of the Critical Success Index (CSI) and Heidke Skill Score (HSS), which show its efficiency and stability in predicting radar echo, especially under the condition of a high 35 dBZ threshold, and its prediction performance improved significantly. It provides an effective solution for fine short-term impending precipitation forecasting.

Based on the Dynamical–Statistical–Analog Ensemble Forecast model for Landfalling Typhoon Precipitation (DSAEF_LTP model), the optimal forecast scheme for the tropical cyclone (TC) accumulated precipitation over Hainan Island, China (DSAEF_LTP_HN) is established. To test the forecasting performance of DSAEF_LTP_HN, its forecasting results are compared with other numerical models. The average threat score (TS) of accumulated precipitation forecast by DSAEF_LTP_HN is compared with other numerical models over independent samples. The results show that for accumulated precipitation ≥ 100 mm, the TS produced by DSAEF_LTP_HN reaches 0.39, ranking first, followed by ECMWF (0.36). For accumulated precipitation ≥ 250 mm, the TS of DSAEF_LTP_HN (0.04) is second only to ECMWF (0.19). Further analysis reveals that the forecasting performance of DSAEF_LTP_HN for TC precipitation is closely related to the TC characteristics. The longer the TC impacts Hainan Island and the heavier the precipitation delivered to Hainan Island, the better the forecasting performance of DSAEF_LTP_HN is. DSAEF_LTP_HN can successfully capture the center of heavy precipitation. However, there is still a phenomenon of false forecasts for some TC heavy precipitation, which requires further improvement of the model in the future.