The Spatiotemporal and Structural Characteristics of Summer Convective Precipitation Systems of Taiwan

The convective precipitation system (CPS) during summer season (July, August and September) of Taiwan is investigated by analyzing three-dimension composited radar reflectivity data of 2005 to 2015. The area size, orientation, shape ratio (minor axis divided by major axis), top/bottom and intensity of the CPS are obtained. There are 25% of CPSs (reflectivity greater than 35 dB) had area size smaller than 50 km² and 45% of CPSs had area size between 50 to 100 km². The maximum area could be up to 4000 km². The majority of CPSs were located along western side of Central Mountain Range (CMR) of Taiwan. The number of CPS start to increase around 13 LST and decrease around 15 LST in northern Taiwan. A second peak of CPS can be found at mid-night (00 LST). In the southern Taiwan, the CPS number increases at the same time, however, decrease around 17 LST. In terms of the structural characteristics, the values of shape ratio of CPS are about 0.3 ~ 0.8. The orientation was about 60⁰ (northwest-southeast) and 40⁰ (northeast-southwest) in northern and southern Taiwan, respectively. The results suggest that the role of CMR is important to the spatiotemporal and structural characteristics of summer convective precipitation systems of Taiwan. Further investigations are undergoing.