Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) is defined as organized convective storms that cover a horizontal scale of hundreds of kilometers. They are one of the most important weather systems producing severe hydrological impacts including hailstorms, damaging winds, heavy precipitation and flooding events on earth. Southeast China, as a population and economic center, undergoes frequent MCSs occurrence each year and suffers severe socio-economic losses. In my MPhil study, we built up the up-to-date 20-year (2001-2020) and high spatiotemporal resolutions (4 km, 30min) MCSs catalog over Southeast China (20°N-40°N, 100°E-125°E). The area overlapping algorithm combined with the Kalman Filter algorithm were adopted for MCS identification using satellite-derived Brightness Temperature (Tb) images. B...[ Read more ]

Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) is defined as organized convective storms that cover a horizontal scale of hundreds of kilometers. They are one of the most important weather systems producing severe hydrological impacts including hailstorms, damaging winds, heavy precipitation and flooding events on earth. Southeast China, as a population and economic center, undergoes frequent MCSs occurrence each year and suffers severe socio-economic losses. In my MPhil study, we built up the up-to-date 20-year (2001-2020) and high spatiotemporal resolutions (4 km, 30min) MCSs catalog over Southeast China (20°N-40°N, 100°E-125°E). The area overlapping algorithm combined with the Kalman Filter algorithm were adopted for MCS identification using satellite-derived Brightness Temperature (Tb) images. Based on the catalog, MCSs climatology, spatio-temporal characteristics and intraseasonal variations throughout the East Asian Monsoon cycle were systematically presented. This full catalog and climatological analysis of MCSs greatly promote the understanding of MCSs characteristics in Southeast China. We further explored the extent to which MCSs contribute to rain belts (RBs) in eight monsoon stages given that rain belts occur frequently in Southeast China influenced by East Asian monsoon. Finally, the synoptic and mesoscale conditions contributing to MCSs occurrence and MCS-RB interaction were discussed. The study helps the understanding of MCSs intraseasonal variations and MCS-RB relationship along with varying monsoonal circulations.