During the early summer rainy season (April to June) of China, frequency and intensity of torrential-rain in South China increase after the onset of South China Sea (SCS) Monsoon in late May, being a serious threat to people’s lives and properties and causing great economic losses. To expedite our understanding of processes key to the torrential rain formation and our efforts to improve simulation and prediction of the torrential rain, the China Meteorological Administration initiated and are organizing Southern China Monsoon Rainfall Experiment (SCMREX). SCMREX consists of four integrated components: field campaign, data collection/processing/sharing, numerical modeling study, and physical mechanism study.

The field campaign of SCMREX aims to obtain unique and composite observations of the fine-scale structures of the convective systems and of their atmospheric environment during the early summer rainy season. The field experiments will be launched in a region mainly covering Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong and the offshore of SCS during mid-April to mid-June of 2013-2014. The experiments will capture the thermodynamic and dynamic properties of the atmosphere, the boundary-layer wind field in particular which is of significant importance to convection initiation, by utilizing the wind profilers, rawinsondes, GPS/MET stations, and dropsondes.Dynamic and microphysical structures of precipitating systems will be detected not only by the Doppler weather radars and lightning location system, but also multiple advanced remote sensing equipments in two enhanced observing areas: 2 C-band dual-polarization radars, 1 X-band dual-polarization radar, 1 micro-rain radar, 4 raindrop distrometers, and 2 millimeter-wave cloud radars. ...