Mechanisms of Heavy Rainfall over the Southern Anhui Mountains: Assessment for Disaster Risk

Heavy rainfall events in the southern Anhui region are the main meteorological disasters, often leading to floods and secondary disasters. This article explores the mechanisms supporting extreme precipitation by studying the spatiotemporal characteristics of heavy rainfall events during 2022–2024 and their related atmospheric circulation patterns. Using high-resolution precipitation data, ERA5 and GDAS reanalysis datasets, and the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model analysis, the main sources and transport pathways of water that cause heavy rainfall in the region were determined. The results indicate that large-scale circulation systems, including the East Asian monsoon (EAM), the Western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), the South Asian high (SAH), and the Tibetan Plateau monsoon (PM), play a decisive role in regulating water vapor flux and convergence in southern Anhui. Southeast Asia, the South China Sea, the western Pacific, and inland China are the main sources of water vapor, with multi-level and multi-channel transport. The uplift effect of mountainous terrain further enhances local precipitation. The Indian Ocean basin mode (IOBM) and zonal index are also closely related to the spatiotemporal changes in rainfall and disaster occurrence. The rainstorm disaster risk assessment based on principal component analysis, the information entropy weight method, and multiple regression shows that the power index model fitted by multiple linear regression is the best for the assessment of disaster-causing rainstorm events. The research results provide a scientific basis for enhancing early warning and disaster prevention capabilities in the context of climate change.