Rainfall pattern analysis in 24 East Asian megacities using a complex network

Abstract

Concurrent floods in multiple locations pose systemic risks to the interconnected economy in East Asia via supply chain disruptions. Despite these significant economic impacts, understanding of the interconnection between rainfall patterns in the region is still currently limited. Here, we analyzed the spatial dependence of the rainfall patterns of 24 megacities in the region using complex analysis theory and discussed the technique's applicability. Each city and rainfall similarity were represented by a node and a link, respectively. Vital-node identification and clustering analysis were conducted using adjacency information entropy and multiresolution community detection. The results of vital-node identification analysis show that high-ranking nodes are cities that are located near main vapor providers in East Asia. Using multiresolution community detection, the groups were clustered to reflect the spatial characteristics of the climate. In addition, the climate links between each group were identified using cross-mutual information considering the delay time for each group. We found a strong bond between Northeast China and the southern Indochinese Peninsula and verified that the links between each group originated from the summer climate characteristics of East Asia. The results of the study show that complex network analysis could be a valuable method for analyzing the spatial relationships between climate factors.