An Overview on the Research of Tropical Cyclone Rainfall Distribution

Tropical cyclone rainfall rates and distribution are the two major components in the operational forecast. They depend on three aspect influences namely tropical cyclone inside structural dynamics, peripheral atmospheric circulation and system impacts, and underlying surface topographic forcing. Those major influential factors are analyzed and discussed in the paper. Then five rainfall areas associated with tropical cyclones are addressed. It can be categorized as follows: 1. Rainfall occur inside the cyclonic circulation, which include eyewall rain, spiral band rain, small vortex rain, inverted trough rain and meso scale shear rain etc. 2. Topographic rain, which can occur inside or outside of the cyclonic circulation. 3. Squall rain in front of typhoon, which occurs in a location out of the typhoon ambit. 4. Typhoon remote precipitation (TRP), which is about one thousand kilometers away from the typhoon. 5. Downstream impact rain, the area of which in this event is several thousand kilometers away from the extratropical transition typhoon.