Record-breaking rainfall accumulations in eastern China produced by Typhoon In-fa (2021)

Abstract

Persistent heavy rainfall produced by western North Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones (TCs) can lead to widespread flooding and landslides in Asian countries. On July 2021, unprecedent rainfall amount occurred when Typhoon In-fa passed through the highly populated eastern China. While the associated synoptic features have been analyzed, the extreme characteristics and return periods of rainfall induced by In-fa remain unexplored. Analyses of rainfall data from a WNP TC database of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) show that Typhoon In-fa not only produces record-breaking rainfall accumulations at individual surface stations, but generates unprecedent rainfall amounts for the whole area of eastern China. Quantitatively, 2, 4, 11, 24 and 55 stations are exposed to once in 200-, 100-, 50-, 20- and 10-year extreme TC rainfall accumulations, respectively, and total rainfall at 75 stations reaches a record high since 1980. Overall, the return period is up to ~481 years for the total rainfall amount accumulated in eastern China during the 1980–2019 baseline. The extremely long rainfall duration is identified as key to the torrential rains in the Yangtze River Delta before In-fa changes its direction of movement from northwestward to northeastward, while the extreme rain rate plays a dominant role in the northern areas afterwards. Probabilities of occurrence of such an unprecedented TC rainfall event have increased in most (~75%) of the eastern China during the period of 2000–2019 compared with those during 1980–1999. Our study highlights the likely increase in risk of extreme TC-induced rainfall accumulations which should be considered in disaster risk mitigation.