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