Surface Characteristics of Convective Cold Pools Observed in Central and Eastern China

Abstract This study investigates the characteristics and driving mechanisms of convective cold pools in central and eastern China using high‐resolution surface observations from 1,597 stations over four warm seasons (2021–2024). A total of 116,963 cold pool events were objectively identified based on a temperature drop of ≥2 K within 20 min accompanied by rainfall. The results show that cold pool frequency peaks in July and in the afternoon, with the highest activity occurring in southern coastal regions. The median temperature perturbation is −4.6 K, and pressure perturbations are generally within 3 hPa. Specific humidity perturbations exhibit a bimodal distribution, featuring both a positive and a negative peak. Cold pools are classified into four types (Type 1–4) reflecting humid‐to‐dry environments accompanied by heavy or light rainfall. Cold pool strength, indicated by temperature perturbation, generally decreases with increasing ambient moisture, reaching its minimum under the high humidity and weak precipitation conditions. Idealized wet‐bulb simulations show that evaporative cooling alone cannot account for the magnitude of observed temperature drops. A strong linear relationship is identified between equivalent potential temperature perturbations and the non‐evaporative cooling component, allowing the advective cooling associated mid‐tropospheric air descent to be quantified. When evaporative and advective cooling are combined, simulated temperature perturbations exhibit high correlations ( r = 0.87–0.97), indicating that both processes are required to explain cold pool intensity. This study provides the first systematic assessment of surface cold‐pool characteristics over central and eastern China.