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Global convection-permitting model accurately predicts plum rain event

Global Convection-permitting Model Accurately Predicts Plum Rain Event
Predictions of monthly mean precipitation by models with different resolution. Credit: Environmental Research Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad71e2

The plum rain is a persistent and extensive rainfall phenomenon that frequently occurs in East Asia during summer, primarily affecting regions along the latitudes of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China to the Kyushu Island in Japan.

In 2020, a record-breaking "violent plum rain" hit China and Japan, causing severe damage to the lives and production activities of the local residents. There is an urgent need to improve the accuracy of subseasonal forecasts of such an event.

Recently, a team led by Prof. Zhao Chun and Prof. An Hong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) conducted a one-month subseasonal forecast experiment using a self-developed global convection-permitting model based on China's Sunway supercomputer, accurately capturing the rainband of the extensive 2020 plum rain events in Japan.

Their work was in Environmental Research Letters.

The research team had previously developed an integrated atmospheric model across scales (iAMAS) on the Sunway supercomputer, and optimized the iAMAS algorithms according to Sunway's hardware characteristics to accelerate computational speed and overcome bottlenecks in massive data reading and writing, enabling monthly forecasts at a global convection-permitting scale (3 km resolution).

By conducting a series of monthly forecasts with different resolutions, the team explored the predictability of the 2020 plum rain. They found that when using a global 60 km low-resolution , there was a significant northward shift in the predicted rainband, which could not be addressed even by refining the resolution to the convection-permitting scale.

Further analysis revealed that at coarser resolutions, the Western North Pacific Subtropical High (WNPSH) expanded, causing the rainband to shift northward and weaken.

Global Convection-permitting Model Accurately Predicts Plum Rain Event
Schematic of the teleconnection between plum rain in Japan with tropical rainfall. Credit: Environmental Research Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad71e2

Further research found that the global convection-permitting model could effectively capture in the equatorial region and reasonably simulate the equatorial rainfall processes and circulation patterns in Western Pacific, aligning well with .

This equatorial rainfall processes and circulation patterns reflect the intensity and position of WNPSH and then influence the circulation in mid-latitudes, including its subsidence and uplift positions, which enabled the researchers to successfully predict the intensity and location of the plum event.

More information: Jun Gu et al, Global convection-permitting model improves subseasonal forecast of plum rain around Japan, Environmental Research Letters (2024).

Journal information: Environmental Research Letters

Citation: Global convection-permitting model accurately predicts plum rain event (2024, November 12) retrieved 22 August 2025 from /news/2024-11-global-convection-accurately-plum-event.html
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