Initiation and Maintenance Mechanisms for Heavy Precipitation System over a Mountainous Island under a Prevailing Monsoon Current

In this study, the initiation and maintenance mechanisms of two long-lived, summer heavy rainfall systems over Taiwan are investigated by performing observational data analyses and numerical simulations using a mesoscale model. For both cases of 9-10 July 2008 (Case A) and 18-19 August 2006 (Case B), the heavy rainfall system developed over the western slope of the Central Mountain Range (CMR) under low-level prevailing southwesterly and westerly flows in early afternoon, respectively. These heavy rainfall systems were moving westward toward Taiwan Strait from CMR, while the embedded individual cells were moving in the opposite direction, behaving like a multicell storm. It was also found these individual cells were initiated, enhanced, and then maintained at the leading edge of the near-surface cool outflow and merged with the heavy rainfall systems which became long-lived. These heavy rainfall systems were classified as an upstream propagating precipitation system in a low Froude-number, conditionally unstable flow with high convective available potential energy (CAPE) or Regime I as proposed in a previous study.