Abstract: Based on hourly precipitation data, warm-sector heavy rainfall events are selected and classified using an objective method over South China during 1982-2015. The main results are as follows. There are a total of 177 warm-sector heavy rainfall events in South China during the study period. Warm-sector heavy rainfall events account for 16.86% of the selected severe heavy rainfall events, indicating that the warm-sector rainfall is a very important precipitation process in South China. Most of warm-sector rainfall events occur from April to July, and a majority occurs in June. The average duration of all events is 11.58 h. There are four centers of warm-sector rainfall events, which are mainly concentrated in the coastal regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, and the northern mountainous areas of Guangdong Province. According to the weather systems that affect rainfall events, the selected warm-sector rainfall events are divided into four types, i.e., shear line, vortex, southerly wind, and backflow. The result shows that different types of warm-sector rainfall events have different effects on the inland and coastal areas of South China, and the occurrence frequency of southerly wind type event is the highest among the four types. Generally, the southerly wind type is an important type of warm-sector rainfall.