Water (Jan 2020)

Analysis of the Lake-Effect on Precipitation in the Taihu Lake Basin Based on the GWR Merged Precipitation

  • Jing Zhao,
  • Long Yang,
  • Lingjie Li,
  • Lachun Wang,
  • Qingfang Hu,
  • Yintang Wang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/w12010180
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
p. 180

Abstract

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Based on the high-density gauged rainfall, the geographically weighted regression (GWR) was used to fuse the daily precipitation of rain gauges with those of Multi-source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation V2.1 (MSWEP V2.1) and a new merged daily precipitation was generated (referred to as GWR merged precipitation, denoted by GWRMP). Then, the precipitation accuracy at 0.1° × 0.1° grid scale and the lake-effect on precipitation in the Taihu Lake Basin were investigated. Results show that GWRMP is characterized with higher precision and stronger spatial recognition ability compared with MSWEP in the whole basin at 0.1° × 0.1° grid scale, and lake area with a relatively sparse network of rain gauges is no exception. Topography is the most important influencing factor of rainfall in the Taihu Lake Basin, the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) between DEM and the main precipitation type (EOF-1) in the whole basin is 0.64, resulting in a rainy area in the southwestern mountain, and less rain at plain and lake area based on the GWRMP. The multi-year average precipitation in the lake upwind area is 8.31% lower than that in the downwind area. Different with the influence mechanism of precipitation in the southwestern mountainous area characterized by high consistency between the spatial distribution of precipitation and the climatic elements derive from the ERA5 meteorological reanalysis data (|r| > 0.6), there is a lower consistency in the lake downwind area (|r| < 0.5) and no consistency in the lake upwind area at the 0.25° × 0.25° grid scale. The southeast monsoon is deduced as the most important factor affecting the procedure of lake-effect on precipitation in the Taihu Lake Basin. The distribution of wind direction and wind speed determines the dynamic changes of surface water vapor to a certain extent, and the lake-effect on precipitation is most likely occurs in July.

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