Quasi-stationary band-shaped precipitation systems, named “senjo-kousuitai”, causing localized heavy rainfall in japan

Abstract

In Japan, localized heavy rainfall events producing accumulated three-hour precipitation amounts larger than 200 mm are often observed to cause severe landslides and floods. Such events are mainly brought by quasi-stationary band-shaped precipitation systems, named “senjo-kousuitai” in Japanese. Senjo-kousuitai is defined as a band-shaped heavy rainfall area with a length of 50 – 300 km and a width of 20 – 50 km, produced by successively formed and developed convective cells, lining up to organize multi-cell clusters, and passing or stagnating at almost the same place for a few hours. The formation processes of senjo-kousuitai are categorized mainly into two types; the broken line type in which convective cells simultaneously form on a quasi-stationary local front by the inflow of warm and humid air, and the back building type in which new convective cells successively forming on the upstream side of low-level winds linearly organize with pre-existing cells. In this study, previous studies of band-shaped precipitation systems are reviewed, and the numerical repro-ducibility of senjo-kousuitai events and the favorable conditions for their occurrence are examined. In a case of Hiroshima heavy rainfall observed in western Japan on 20 August 2014, the reproduction of the senjo-kousuitai requires a horizontal resolution of at least 2 km, which is sufficient to roughly resolve the formation and development processes of convective cells, while a resolution of 250 – 500 m is necessary to accurately reproduce their inner core structures. The 2-km model quantitatively reproduced the Hiroshima case when initial conditions 10 hours before the event were used, but the predicted amounts of maximum accumulated precipitation were consid-erably reduced as the initial time became closer to the occurrence time of the senjo-kousuitai. This reduction was brought from the excessive inflow of low-level dry air that shifted occurrence areas of new multi-cell clusters. Six favorable occurrence conditions of senjo-kousuitai events for their diagnostic forecasts were statistically constructed from environmental atmospheric fields in previous localized heavy rainfall events. Two conditions of (1) large water vapor flux amounts (> 150 g m−2 s−1) and (2) short distances to the level of free convection (< 1000 m) were chosen representatively for the low-level water vapor field that is judged based on 500-m height data. Four other favorable conditions are selected; (3) high relative humidity at midlevels (> 60 % at 500 hPa and 700 hPa), (4) large vertical shear estimated from the storm relative environmental helicity (> 100 m2 s−2), (5) synoptic-scale as-cending areas (400 km mean field at 700 hPa), and (6) the exclusion of warm air advection frequently appearing at 700 – 850 hPa and inhibiting the development of convection (i.e., an equilibrium level > 3000 m).