Some Advances and Problems in the Study of Heavy Rain in Xinjiang

The main study results on the heavy rain in Xinjiang are summarized from 1960 to 2009, which include largescale circulation, synoptic scale systems, mesoscale systems, and water vapor characteristics. Because heavy rain in Xinjiang were less focused and studied, the gaps of heavy rain researches between the reasearches on precipitation in eastern China and Xinjiang are becoming larger and larger in recent years, which bring about severe lacks of capabilities coping with disaster prevention and reduction. Some problems remaining to be resolved are pointed out as follows: The structure and physical formation mechanisms of the middleAsia vortex and easterly lowlevel jet stream and their impacts on rainfall; the structure features and physical mechanisms of the occurrence and development of mesoscale systems; the sourcesink structure and relayed transportation mechanisms of water vapor which induce heavy rain; the relationship between typical rainstorm processes and the highmiddlelow largescale water vapor transportation anomaly, etc. To solve the abovementioned problems, it is very important for improving the weather forecast accuracy of heavy rain and enhancing the capabilities of disaster prevention and reduction.