Warm season heavy rainfall events over the Huaihe River Valley and their linkage with wintertime thermal condition of the tropical oceans

Warm season heavy rainfall events over the Huaihe River Valley (HRV) of China are amongst the top causes of agriculture and economic loss in this region. Thus, there is a pressing need for accurate seasonal prediction of HRV heavy rainfall events. This study improves the seasonal prediction of HRV heavy rainfall by implementing a novel rainfall framework, which overcomes the limitation of traditional probability models and advances the statistical inference on HRV heavy rainfall events. The framework is built on a three-cluster Normal mixture model, whose distribution parameters are sampled using Bayesian inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. The three rainfall clusters reflect probability behaviors of light, moderate, and heavy rainfall, respectively. Our analysis indicates that heavy rainfall events make the largest contribution to the total amount of seasonal precipitation. Furthermore, the interannual variation of summer precipitation is attributable to the variation of heavy rainfall frequency over the HRV. The heavy rainfall frequency, in turn, is influenced by sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) over the north Indian Ocean, equatorial western Pacific, and the tropical Atlantic. The tropical SSTAs modulate the HRV heavy rainfall events by influencing atmospheric circulation favorable for the onset and maintenance of heavy rainfall events. Occurring 5 months prior to the summer season, these tropical SSTAs provide potential sources of prediction skill for heavy rainfall events over the HRV. Using these preceding SSTA signals, we show that the support vector machine algorithm can predict HRV heavy rainfall satisfactorily. The improved prediction skill has important implication for the nation’s disaster early warning system.