The performance verification of several numerical models in middle range forecasting of regional heavy rainfall in North China

Seventy (70) typical heavy rainfall cases in North China during the summers from 2010 to 2016 were selected and divided into three categories, i.e. the vortex type, the west trough type and shear line type according to the atmospheric circulation. Then we verified the middle range forecasting abilities of several operational models to the regional heavy rainfall in summer in North China by using the MODE method and the contrast of the difference of centroidal distance, axis angel and aspect ratios, etc. The results show that ECMWF and T639 models cannot well forecast the vortex-typed regional heavy rainfall. When the area of heavy rainfall is large, the rain belt predicted by ECMWF and T639 models show a long-narrow shape in the northeast to southwest direction, which is consistent with observations. However, the location of heavy rainfall predicted by ECMWF and T639 models deviate to the south and to the west with respect to observations. The heavy rainfall area predicted by ECMWF and T639 models is bigger than observations for small area of rainfall cases, but far smaller for widespread rainfall cases.