Rainfall Distributions over Land associated with Tropical Cyclones making landfall along the South China Coast

The rainfall distributions over land associated with TCs that made landfall along the South China coast are examined using rainguage data. Among thirty-five TCs made landfall along the South China coast during 1992 – 2008, some TCs which were selected based on the minimum raingauges criteria were used to investigate the rainfall distribution over land. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model, version 3, has been used to investigate the effect of topography on precipitation. Regardless of the direction of storm motion, both the right inner zones (radial distance within 100 km from TC centre) and the right outer zones (radial distance between 100km and 300 km from TC centre) of the selected TCs averagely appear to have the largest amount of rainfall at landfall time. Vertical wind shear shows no significant effect on the asymmetric distribution of precipitation over land. From the model result, the precipitation is larger at both inner and outer zones of right quadrant than that of left quadrant. As that, the topography could have the contribution on the asymmetric rainfall distribution over land by the enhancement of air lifting process.