Kilometer-scale multi-physics simulations of heavy precipitation events in Northeast China

In this study, we show how to address this issue by kilometer-scale simulations and how to reduce computational costs in Northeast China with the complex terrain and distribution of land and sea. Three typical heavy precipitation events are simulated at 3 km horizontal resolution, and each event is simulated with 24 combinations of schemes (with or without a scale-aware cumulus scheme, three microphysics schemes, and four planetary boundary layer schemes), which are evaluated against gauge observations.

Compared to gauge observations, the ensemble mean of simulations of hourly maximum precipitation and average accumulated precipitation outperforms three widely accepted satellite products in the cold vortex and the snowstorm case, and is of comparable accuracy in the typhoon case. Overall, the microphysics scheme significantly impacts the maximum hourly precipitation, whereas the planetary boundary layer scheme has a strong control over the accumulated precipitation.