Heralding Rain — Prof. LU Mengqian & Her PhD students Publish Paper in a Nature Partner Journal

Prof. LU Mengqian, Assistant Professor of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and her PhD students, CHENG Tat Fan and DAI Lun have published a paper in the prestigious journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. The journal is part of the Nature Partner Journals Series under Springer Nature.

The paper, entitled “Moisture channels and pre-existing weather systems for East Asian rain belts”, highlights Prof. Lu and her team’s research that sets out to gain insight into the environmental conditions and hydrological cycles that govern and give rise to rain belts in East Asia from April to September. Heavy rain has in recent years, time and again, plagued many parts of East Asia, frequently causing severe flooding and landslides during the rainy season. This not only disrupts and affects the daily operations and wellbeing of societies but also threatens human lives. Given the current challenges in rainfall forecasting at a lead time beyond five days, the study attempts to backtrace for a fortnight the atmospheric moisture pathways and weather systems that progress, evolve and eventually become significant rain belts. The research aims to facilitate a better understanding of the formation and cycles of rain belts in East Asia, thereby benefiting our future heavy rainfall forecasting.

The academic journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science is dedicated to publishing high-quality papers on topics such as the dynamics, variabilities and prediction of weather and climate, climate change, air pollution, atmospheric chemistry, the hydrological cycle, as well as atmosphere-ocean and atmosphere-land interactions. The above paper is available online at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-021-00187-6.