Structural characteristics of atmospheric temperature and humidity inside clouds of convective and stratiform precipitation in the rainy season over East Asia

In this study, a merged dataset constructed from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission precipitation radar rain products and Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive data is used to investigate the thermal structural characteristics of convective and stratiform precipitation in the rainy season (May–August) of 1998–2012 over East Asia. The results show that the storm tops for convective precipitation are higher than those for stratiform precipitation, because of the more unstable atmospheric motions for convective precipitation. Moreover, the storm tops are higher at 1200 UTC than at 0000 UTC over land regions for both convective and stratiform precipitation, and vice versa for ocean region. Additionally, temperature anomaly patterns inside convective and stratiform precipitating clouds show a negative anomaly of about 0–2 K, which results in cooling effects in the lower troposphere. This cooling is more obvious at 1200 UTC for stratiform precipitation. The positive anomaly that appears in the middle troposphere is more than 2 K, with the strongest warming at 300 hPa. Relative humidity anomaly patterns show a positive anomaly in the middle troposphere (700–500 hPa) prior to the occurrence of the two types of precipitation, and the increase in moisture is evident for stratiform precipitation.