Updated: 06-12-2023
Source: China Meteorological News Press
“When an upper-level trough and ridge system persists in specific areas, there is a tendency for surface fronts,cyclone tracks, and rainfall bands to concentrate and stabilize, thus causing severe and persistent heavy rainfall and flooding.”?This is a point made by TAO?in?his?Heavy?Rainfalls?in?China.
In 1980,?Heavy?Rainfalls?in?China?was officially published as the first monograph to thoroughly summarize rainstorms in China. With?an in-depth analysis of selected?rainstorms?in?the 20th century, it?systematically summarizes the phenomenon?by type and?mechanism, proposing its?forecasting methods?at the same time.
In?August 1975, an extremely strong rainstorm?hitting southern Henan alarmed the Chinese?meteorological community. The?Chinese Academy of Sciences?(CAS), the former Central Meteorological Bureau (CMB)?and major universities jointly initiated a large-scale rainstorm research study, in which TAO was engaged.
The study?examined?instances of severe rainstorm recorded in China of?the?past?50 years,?based on which TAO pointed out that?the?rainstorm of a meso-scale phenomenon?features?complex?interactions between different scales, which enables?the?entire?storm system to continue to be maintained or enhanced. This view was later widely applied in the analysis of a number of storms in?China.
In1976,?TAO?led?several researchers?from?the?Institute of Atmospheric Physics?(IAP), CAS, in hanging around the?site around the clock from spring to summer for an analytic?study of every extremely intense downpour that occurred in China between 1931 and 1975in connection with a field study for about three months.
Actually, TAO firstly began his?rainstorm?research as early as 1954?when such weather?caused the Changjiang River to overflow.?It was a critical juncture concerning the?enormous property damage and life safety potentially caused by flood diversion or non-diversion, a dilemma that could be addressed only by a definite forecast. Thanks to his data analysis?and extraordinary boldness,?TAO managed to?forecast?that “the rainstorm?is to?stop”?and he was right.
Afterwards, TAO continued to delved?deeper into the field. With a?five-year in-depth analysis?of more than a dozen very heavy rainstorms that historically devastated?this country, he revealed in?the said monograph?that?some of the major contributors to?rainstorm in China, including climatology of rainstorms, essential formation conditions, large-scale circulation,activities of mesoscale systems within rain, main weather-scale systems contributing to heavy rainfall and methods of its?analysis and forecasting.
He led the research team in studying the events breaking out from the Changjiang River flood in 1998 to the freezing rain and snow in early 2008.
What can resist the rush of passing time and leave something lasting in the hearts of the people? It is in?the?yellowish?pages of?Heavy?Rainfalls?in?China?embodying?the spirit of "down-to-earth research to solve problems related to the national economy and people's livelihood" between the lines?that ananswer?is found.
Editor: WANG Chang, JIANG Zhiqing