Resilient dataset of rain clusters with life cycle evolution during April to June 2016–2020 over eastern Asia based on observations from the GPM DPR and Himawari-8 AHI

[摘要] Our knowledge of the properties of precipitation andclouds over their life cycles has progressed with the rapid development ofsatellite observations. However, previous studies have focused on the lifecycle evolution of the macroscale features of precipitation and clouds,whereas the evolution of the microphysical properties of precipitation andclouds over their life cycles is yet to be determined. One of the reasonsfor this lack of knowledge is the fact that there is no single datasetproviding both the three-dimensional structure of precipitation and therelevant life cycle properties. We identified initial rain clusters (RCs)from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) 2ADPR dataset and mesoscaleconvective systems (MCSs) from the Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Image (AHI)gridded product. Based on the contours of the initial RCs and MCSs, we thencarried out a series of resilient processes, including filtration,segmentation, and consolidation, to obtain the final RCs. The final RCs hada one-to-one correspondence with the relevant MCS. We extracted the RC area,central location, average radar reflectivity profile, average droplet sizedistribution profile, and other precipitation information from the contoursof the final RCs and GPM 2ADPR dataset. The life cycle evolution of the MCSarea, location, and cloud-top brightness temperature were retrieved from thecorresponding MCSs and their tracks from Himawari-8 observations. The finaldataset provides both three-dimensional precipitation information and lifecycle information of precipitating clouds during April to June 2016–2020over eastern Asia. This dataset facilitates studies of the life cycleevolution of precipitation and provides a good foundation for convectionparameterizations in precipitation simulations. The dataset used in thispaper is freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6198716 (Zhang et al., 2022).

[学科分类] 眼科学