Classification of precipitation type in north china using model-based explicit fields of hydrometeors with modified thermodynamic conditions

Abstract

The ability to forecast thermodynamic conditions aloft and near the surface is critical to the accurate forecasting of precipitation type at the surface. This paper presents an experimental version of a new scheme for diagnosing precipitation type. The method considers the optimum surface temperature threshold associated with each precipitation type and combines model-based explicit fields of hydrometeors with higher-resolution modified thermodynamic and topographic information to determine precipitation types in North China. Based on over 60 years of precipitation-type samples from North China, this study explores the climatological characteristics of the five precipitation types—snow, rain, ice pellets (IP), rain/snow mix (R/S MIX), and freezing rain (FZ)—as well as the suitable air temperature Ta and wet-bulb temperature Tw thresholds for distinguishing different precipitation types. Direct output from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, such as temperature and humidity, was modified by downscaling and bias correction, as well as by incor-porating the latest surface observational data and high-resolution topographic data. Validation of the precipitation-type forecasts from this scheme was performed against observations from the 2016 to 2019 winter seasons and two case studies were also analyzed. Compared with the similar diagnostic routine in the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) forecasting system used to predict precipitation type over North China, the skill of the method proposed here is similar for rain and better for snow, R/S MIX, and FZ. Furthermore, depiction of the diagnosed boundary between R/S MIX and snow is good in most areas. However, the number of misclassifications for R/S MIX is significantly larger than for rain and snow.