A modeling analysis of rainfall and water cycle by the cloud-resolving WRF model over the western North Pacific

Simulated regional precipitation, especially extreme precipitation events, and the regional hydrologic budgets over the western North Pacific region during the period from May to June 2008 were investigated with the high-resolution (4-km grid spacing) Weather Research and Forecast (WRF v3.2.1) model with explicit cloud microphysics. The model initial and boundary conditions were derived from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/Department of Energy (NCEP/DOE) Reanalysis 2 data. The model precipitation results were evaluated against the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis 3B42 product. The results show that the WRF simulations can reasonably reproduce the spatial distributions of daily mean precipitation and rainy days. However, the simulated frequency distributions of rainy days showed an overestimation of light precipitation, an underestimation of moderate to heavy precipitation, but a good representation of extreme precipitation. The downscaling approach was able to add value to the very heavy precipitation over the ocean since the convective processes are resolved by the high-resolution cloud-resolving model. Moreover, the water vapor budget analysis indicates that heavy precipitation is contributed mostly by the stronger moisture convergence; whereas, in less convective periods, the precipitation is more influenced by the surface evaporation. The simulated water vapor budgets imply the importance in the tropical monsoon region of cloud microphysics that affects the precipitation, atmospheric latent heating and, subsequently, the large-scale circulation.