ANALYSIS OF TROPICAL CYCLONE PRECIPITATION FOR DIFFERENT INTENSITY CLASS IN NORTHWEST PACIFIC WITH TRMM DATA

Combined with TRMM products and Tropical Cyclone (TC) best track data in Northwest Pacific from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2009, a total of 118 TCs, including 336 instantaneous TC precipitation observations are established as the TRMM TC database, and the database is stratified into four intensity classes according to the standard of TC intensity adopted by China Meteorological Administration (CMA): Severe Tropical Storm (STS), Typhoon (TY), Severe Typhoon (STY) and Super Typhoon (SuperTY). For each TC snapshot, the mean rainfall distribution is computed using 10-km annuli from the TC center to a 300-km radius, then the axisymmetric component of TC rainfall is represented by the radial distribution of the azimuthal mean rain rate; the mean rain rates, rain types occurrence and contribution proportion are computed for each TC intensity class; and the mean quadrantal distribution of rain rates along TCs motion is analyzed. The result shows that: (1) TCs mean rain rates increase with their intensity classes, and their radial distributions show single-peak characteristic gradually, and furthermore, the characteristics of rain rates occurrence and contribution proportion change from dual-peak to single-peak distribution, with the peak rain rate at about 5.0 mm/h; (2) Stratiform rain dominate the rain type in the analysis zone, while convective rain mainly occurred in the eye-wall region; (3) The values of mean rain rate in each quadrant along TCs motion are close to each other, relatively, the value in the right-rear quadrant is the smallest one.