Estimations of Precipitable Water and Its Characteristics during the HUBEX/IOP 1998

GMS-5 satellite data at channels of infrared split windows and water vapor are analyzed to retrieve the precipitable water (PW) distributions under cloud-free conditions. Radiosonde data and surface station data are applied to estimate the PW distributions under cloudy conditions. These two methods are then merged to obtain the PW distributions under all-weather conditions during the Huaihe River Basin Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (HUBEX). The results of the all-weather PW distributions from these methods demonstrate that this new merging technique may be applied to derive large-scale or global maps of PW. It is revealed that the atmospheric water vapor over the Yangtze-Huaihe River Basins came mainly from the southwest during the 1998 prevailing period of Meiyu. Sufficient atmospheric PW is a necessary condition for ground rainfall. Under certain dynamic conditions, it can be partially transformed into surface precipitation. Several types of rain are displayed and their PW conditions and characteristics, as well as atmospheric dynamic conditions, are analyzed. It is demonstrated that surface precipitation centers usually appear not at the high PW centers but on their downwind sides.