Characteristics of Typhoon Precipitation and Non-typhoon Precipitation over East Asia Based on Merged PR and VIRS Data

Typhoon and non-typhoon regions were separated in this study by using the Tropical Cyclone database and merged data of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Precipitation radar (PR) and visible/infrared scanner from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency/Earth Observation Research Center (JAXA/EORC). The characteristics of typhoon and non-typhoon precipitation and their infrared signals were then analyzed over East Asia during the rainy season from 1998 to 2007. The distribution of typhoon rainfall intensity was shown to be significantly wider than that of non-typhoon, particularly for convective rainfall ranging from 5 mm/h to 20 mm/h. Strong typhoon rainfall occurred mainly over the ocean in East Asia. Although the main form of precipitation over East Asia is non-typhoon stratiform precipitation, the contribution of typhoon precipitation to the total precipitation can reach 20% in the east area of Taiwan and thus cannot be ignored. Storm heights of typhoon precipitation show distinguished land-sea distribution differences ranging from 4 km to 9 km for stratiform precipitation and 4.5 km to 12.5 km for convective precipitation. These results are much wider than those of non-typhoon precipitation. Moreover, the conditional rain rate, covering area, and brightness temperature at 10.8 μm differs significantly for typhoon precipitation of various intensity periods.