Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40645-020-00347-x(2020) 7:39

Progress in Earth andPlanetary Science

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open AccessTyphoon-induced precipitation
characterization over northern Japan: acase study for typhoons in 2016
Sridhara Nayak*

and Tetsuya Takemi

Abstract
In August 2016, northern Japan was stuck by apparently unusual occurrence of the landfall of four typhoons andexperienced record-breaking heavy precipitations. This study analyzed the extreme precipitations carried out by thesefour typhoons to understand their internal structure over northern Japan by computing the probability distributions ofprecipitation durations with their peak intensities exceeding a range of percentile thresholds starting from 70 to 99%.
The main focus was on the duration and size of the extreme precipitations together with the precipitation structure
over northern Japan during the passage of each of these four typhoons through different latitudinal locations. To ourknowledge, this is the first study to examine the long-lasting and widespread extreme precipitations carried byindividual typhoon and such information are crucial for prevention of and protection from typhoon-related hazards
over Japan. We find that the typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido region exhibit similar characteristics of precipitation
duration, while the typhoon landfalled over Tohoku region shows relatively long-lived precipitation durations.
However, all the four typhoons show a robust feature in the precipitation sizes over northern Japan. The occurrence ofheavy precipitations with intensity higher than 20–30 mm h−1 is more frequent and last 6 to 9 h over northern Japan.
These features may explain the excessive precipitations caused by each typhoon. The important information containedin this study is the duration and size of the precipitations induced by the typhoons vary depending on the landfalling
region. However, the precipitation characteristics associated with all the three typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido show
mostly robust features. This study gives a first step towards a description of the spatio-temporal characteristics oftyphoon-induced precipitations and has an overall implication towards the future research that is needed for theassessment of typhoon-induced precipitation-related disasters in future warming climate.
Keywords: Precipitation characterization, Precipitation size, Precipitation duration, Typhoon, Radar-AMeDAS

Introduction
Tropical cyclones (TCs) are gigantic, destructive, anddeadly disaster-spawning weather phenomena that bringvery heavy precipitations and widespread flooding tocoastal regions. According to the study of Pfahl andWernli (2012), a high percentage of precipitation extremes (up to 80%) is directly related to cyclones over
the Mediterranean region, Newfoundland, near Japan,
and over the South China Sea. Su et al. (2012) reported* Correspondence: nayak@storm.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto
6110011, Japanthat the tropical cyclones over Taiwan bring about 70%
of extreme precipitations in July-October season. Kamahori and Arakawa (2018) evaluated typhoon-induced
precipitation over Japan from the rain gauge observation
for the period 1981–2010 and highlighted that the largest annual precipitation amount, which is 15% or moreof the total annual precipitation, over western Japan isdue to the TC activities. Thus, characterization of tropical cyclone-induced precipitation has been the focus ofmany studies not only for an individual tropical cyclone(e.g., Lin and Jeng 2000; Ishikawa et al. 2013; Chaithong
et al. 2018) but also for the climatological period (e.g.,© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate ifchanges were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commonslicence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commonslicence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

Cheung et al. 2018; Kim and Jain 2011; Su et al. 2012;
Kamahori and Arakawa 2018).
Over the year, a large number of typhoons form over
the western North Pacific region, and some of them became highly destructive, for example, Typhoon Vera
(1959), Typhoon Mireille (1991), Typhoon Songda(2004), Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Typhoon Jebi (2018),
and Typhoon Hagibis (2019) and caused severe andwidespread damages by extreme precipitations (Okuet al. 2010; Mori et al. 2014; Mori and Takemi 2016;
Takemi et al. 2016a, 2016b; Ito et al. 2016; Kanada et al.
2017; Takemi 2018; Takemi et al. 2019; Takemi 2019;
Takemi and Ito 2020; Takemi and Unuma 2020). Suchextreme typhoons strongly cause flash floods, landslides,
and mudslides over large areas in a short period of time
(Emanuel 2005; IPCC 2013, 2014; Takemi et al. 2016c;
Guan et al. 2018). In the context of characterization of
extreme precipitation events over Japan, several studies
have been conducted in order to assess the spatial andtemporal variability of precipitation amounts in different
scales mostly either at the climatological period (e.g.
Kanada et al. 2010, 2017) or at the baiu seasonal period(e.g., Duan et al. 2017; Yokoyama et al. 2017). Few studies have also been conducted for individual extremely
heavy precipitation events over Japan to understand theprecipitation distribution and their characteristics atconvective and synoptic scale (Ishikawa et al. 2013;
Takemi 2018; Kato et al. 2018; Tsuguti et al. 2019).
However, to understand the severity of such disastrous
events, studies are limited to get the information about
the internal temporal-spatial precipitation structure inindividual typhoons and particularly the duration andsize of the precipitation within the typhoons.
In August 2016, northern Japan was stuck by apparently unusual occurrence of the landfall of four typhoons
named as Typhoon Chanthu (T1607), Mindulle (T1609),
Lionrock (T1610), and Kompasu (T1611). These were
the series of typhoons moving northward near Japan,
and three of them (except Typhoon Lionrock) landed on
Hokkaido based on the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) Tokyo’s best-track datasets. It
was the first time till date that three typhoons landed on
Hokkaido in a year. Typhoon Lionrock landed in the Pacific Ocean side of the Tohoku region in northern Japan.
It was also for the first time in the history among the records (since 1951) available at Japan Meteorological
Agency (JMA). All these typhoons made landfall withstrong winds and brought heavy precipitations to thelandfall regions and destroyed many lives and properties.
However, neither model nor observational data have
yet been analyzed for individual typhoons that can explain the long-lasting and widespread extreme precipitations carried by a typhoon, and such information are
crucial for prevention of and protection from typhoon-

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related hazards over Japan. Such assessments are also
important in storm impacts for the proper interpretationof precipitation information, particularly to determine
and map the vulnerability of the typhoon landfall region.
In addition, the space and duration analysis of extreme
precipitations provides robust results to determine thepossible impacts and the monitoring of climate risks.
We thus attempted to investigate the temporal andspatial characteristics of precipitation produced by typhoons to explore (1) the distribution, extremes, duration, size, and frequency of the precipitation induced byeach typhoon, (2) the duration and size of heavy precipitations together with the precipitation duration versus
peak intensity characteristics in each typhoon, and (3)the precipitation structure over northern Japan during
the passage of each typhoon through different latitudinallocations. For this purpose, we used rain gauge-radar
precipitation analysis data. The four typhoons in 2016
were chosen here, because they produced recordbreaking heavy precipitations in northern Japan. These
cases are considered to be appropriate examples tounderstand the spatio-temporal characteristics oftyphoon-induced extreme precipitations in northern
Japan. In addition, recent analysis precipitation data produced by merging rain gauges and radars have a highspatial resolution, which is useful to quantitatively
characterize extreme precipitations.

Data and methods
We analyzed the hourly observations of precipitation fromthe Radar Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition
System (Radar-AMeDAS) analyzed precipitation datasets
at 1 km resolution for each typhoon separately from eachgrid points over land in northern Japan (Fig. 1). The
Radar-AMeDAS observations are the radar/rain gaugeanalyzed precipitation product available at 1 km grid overJapan which provides the composite radar-derived rainfall
maps calibrated with rain gauges based on radar observation of rainfall intensity. We analyzed the Radar-AMeDAS
data for 2 days for each typhoon separately keeping the typhoon landfall time (over Japanese land) as the center of
the total selected duration. An overview of the lifetime
period of each typhoon and the time period used in thisstudy is descried in Table 1. The total sample points overthe land were about 6 M for each typhoon obtained from
560 × 840 grid points at 48 h.
In this study, we reproduced the Kendon et al. (2012)
methodology using all the grids points (land only) for
each typhoon separately. We investigated the distribution, extremes, frequency, duration, and size of the precipitations induced by each typhoon with different
thresholds (50th to 99th precipitation percentile). To
compute the duration of the precipitations, we identified
the independent precipitation durations above aNayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 1 Total precipitation (2 days accumulated) from a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, c Typhoon Lionrock, and d Typhoon Kompasu

threshold in the hourly time series at each grid point.
An independent duration is defined as continuous periods of precipitation exceeding the threshold. Then, we
computed the mean and maximum intensity of precipitations in each duration and stratified the precipitation
durations with intensity exceeding various precipitationthresholds in different duration bins with 1 h interval.
Finally, the probability distributions are computed ineach duration bin. To compute the size of the precipitations, we identified the independent precipitation cells
above a threshold over the land at each hour. An independent cell is defined as the connected grids (diagonals
are excluded) with precipitation intensity exceeding thethreshold. We computed the mean and maximum intensity of precipitations in each cell and stratified the precipitation cells with intensity exceeding various
precipitation thresholds in different cell bins with 1 km

internal. Finally, the probability distributions are computed in each cell bin. The peak intensity in each precipitation duration is also examined to explore therelationship between the heaviest precipitation and its
entire duration. To understand such temporal structureof the peak intensified precipitations carried by each typhoon, we computed the joint probability distribution of
precipitation durations with their peak intensities exceeding a range of percentile thresholds starting from 70
to 99%. Mathematically,PðA∩BÞ ¼ P ðAÞ:P ðBÞ

ð1Þ

where P is the probability, A is the collection of independent precipitation durations, and B is the peak intensity at each precipitation duration.

Table 1 Overview of each typhoon and time periods used in this study
Typhoon name

Lifetime duration (in year 2016)

Maximum wind speed

Minimum pressure

Time period used (in year 2016)

Chanthu (T1607)

18UTC 13Aug–18UTC 17Aug

55 knots

980 hPa

00UTC 16Aug–23UTC 17Aug

Mindulle (T1609)

06UTC 19Aug–03UTC 23Aug

60 knots

975 hPa

12UTC 21Aug–11UTC 23Aug

Lionrock (T1610)

12UTC 21Aug–15UTC 30Aug

90 knots

940 hPa

12UTC 29Aug–11UTC 31Aug

Kompasu (T1611)

00UTC 20Aug–18UTC 21 Aug

35 knots

994 hPa

06UTC 20Aug–05UTC 22Aug

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

Results
Precipitation distribution

The spatial distribution of total precipitation amounts
during the passage of each typhoon over northern Japanis shown in Fig. 1. The results indicate that all the four
typhoons brought heavy precipitations to the northern
Japan. T1607 and T1610 brought total precipitations ofgreater than 200 mm to the landfall regions in Hokkaido
and Tohoku regions, as already shown in the previous
studies of Kanada et al. (2017) and Nayak and Takemi(2019a, 2019b). T1609 and T1611 brought relatively lessprecipitation and greater than 150 mm to some areas
over Hokkaido.
Figure 2 shows the extremes, frequencies, durations,and size of hourly precipitations (≥ 1 mm) induced byeach typhoon evaluated on the land regions shown in
Fig. 1. The extremes are analyzed at different percentilesof precipitation intensities starting from 50th to 99.99th
for each typhoon (Fig. 2a). We find that the extreme
precipitation intensities (up to 95th percentile) carriedby all the four typhoons are almost the same. The 99th
percentile of all the four typhoons correspond to 20–30
mm h−1 precipitation intensity, while the 99.99th valueof T1610 corresponds to 72 mm h−1, and those of otherthree typhoons correspond to 40–60 mm h−1. The frequency distribution of the precipitation intensities induced by each typhoon is shown in Fig. 2b. We find that

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the frequencies of precipitations with intensity up to ~30 mm h−1 are similar for all the four typhoons. Stronger
precipitations bought by T1610 have intensities above
120 mm h−1, while that carried by other three typhoons
have intensities 55–75 mm h−1. Figure 2c shows the frequency distribution of group of precipitation durations
induced by each typhoon. It shows that the precipitations carried by all the four typhoons are mostly shortlived and last up to 3 h, while some precipitations last
up to 12 h. All the four typhoons also carried long-lived
precipitations which last up to a day or longer, although
the precipitations that last more than a day are not sofrequent. Figure 3d represents the frequency of group of
precipitation sizes brought by each typhoon. It showsthat all the four typhoons brought more frequent localized precipitations (within 10 km2) than widespread precipitations (> 100 km2). It is noticed that all the threelandfalling typhoons (i.e., the cases except T1610) over
Hokkaido show similar characteristics of precipitation
sizes.
Precipitation intensity

Figure 3 depicts the mean intensities in the different
group of durations and sizes of typhoon-induced precipitations. It shows that most frequent short-lived precipitations correspond to about 6–10 mm h−1 mean
intensity (Fig. 3a–d), while the long-lived precipitations

Fig. 2 Precipitation a percentiles, b frequency distribution, c duration, and d size. Results in (c) and (d) correspond to the frequency distributionsof group of precipitation durations and precipitation sizes respectively

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 3 Probability of intensity of precipitation (a–g) duration and (h–k) size

have intensity 15–20 mm h−1 (Fig. 3f, g). Longer duration(19–24 h) precipitations correspond up to ~ 20 mm h−1
except for T1609 (Fig. 3g). The T1609 brought up to 18
h duration precipitation with mean intensity up to 30
mm h−1, whereas the T1611 carried relatively longer durations (up to a day), but with same intensity. On theother hand, T1607 and T1610 brought long-lived stronger precipitations with intensity more than 70 mm h−1.
The results of mean intensities in the precipitation sizes
indicate that the intensity increases with the size of the
precipitation (Fig. 3h–k). The localized precipitations(1–10 grids) correspond to mean intensity up to 10 mm
h−1, while the widespread precipitation (11–1000 grids)
shows higher intensity. All the four typhoons show
mostly similar characteristics of mean intensity in precipitation sizes. These results indicate that longer duration precipitations are mostly stronger (Fig. 3e–g)
compare to shorter duration precipitations (Fig. 3a, b),
and smaller sized precipitations are weaker (Fig. 3h, i)compared to larger sized precipitation (Fig. 3j, k).

Duration of heavy precipitations

In this section, we analyzed the temporal features of the
precipitations carried by each typhoon with intensity exceeding a range of percentile thresholds. This is shown in
Fig. 4. Each curve in Fig. 4 depicts the probability distribution of precipitation durations with intensity exceeding apercentile threshold starting from 70 to 99%. The results
indicate that the short-duration precipitations (less than 3h) occur more frequently compare to long-duration precipitations irrespective of percentile thresholds. For
T1607, T1609, and T1611, extreme precipitations with intensity higher than 99th percentile tend to be short-lived
and lasted up to 4 h, while the precipitations with intensity
higher than 90th percentile continued up to 6 h and thatwith intensity exceeding 70th percentile lasted up to 12 h.
For T1609, the heavy precipitations with intensity exceeding 99th percentile continued up to 6 h, while those withintensities higher than 95th percentiles are long-lived andlasted more than 18 h. These results indicate that the typhoons landfalling over Hokkaido region show almostNayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

same precipitation duration characteristics compared tothe precipitation durations of the typhoon landfalled overTohoku region.

Size of heavy precipitations

To assess the heavy precipitations in terms of its spatial
structure, we investigated the size of precipitations carriedby each typhoon with intensities exceeding various percentile thresholds. Figure 5 represents the probability distribution of precipitation sizes with intensity thresholds
starting from 70 to 99%. We find that all the four typhoons carried more frequent localized heavy precipitations compared to the widespread precipitations broughtby these typhoons. Higher frequency of localized extreme
precipitations associated with each typhoon is foundto have spatial scales within 20 km2. There are also
widespread precipitations larger than 100 km2, but not
so frequent (Fig. 2d). However, the precipitation sizes
up to 40 km2 areas with intensity exceeding 99th percentile tend to be more frequent. All the four typhoons show similar characteristics of precipitation
sizes, indicating a robust feature in the spatial structure of the typhoon-induced precipitations overnorthern Japan.

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Precipitation duration versus peak intensity

In this section, we examined the duration-intensity characteristics of typhoon-induced precipitations from Eq. (1)by considering peak intensities in each precipitation duration exceeding a range of percentile thresholds (Fig. 6).
We find that low peak precipitations (for instance exceeding the intensity 70th percentile) tend to be more shortlived, with a decreasing probability of high peak precipitations with increasing percentile thresholds. For the typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido, the probabilities of 8–9
h long precipitations are higher and carried high peak precipitations. These features may explain the excessive precipitations caused by each typhoon. For T1610, we findthat all the peak precipitations lasted for 6 h, and theirprobability tends to be higher than compare to long-lived
precipitation. These results indicate that all the typhoons
over northern Japan carry more frequent heavy precipitations with intensity higher than 20–30 mm h−1 for continuous 6 to 9 h.
Precipitation structure

To understand the precipitation structure of each typhoon, we examined the area-averaged accumulated precipitations over northern Japan during the passage ofeach typhoon through different latitudinal locations

Fig. 4 Duration of heavy precipitations with different thresholds from a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, c Typhoon Lionrock, and d
Typhoon Kompasu. Results correspond to the probability

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 5 Size of heavy precipitations with different thresholds from a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, c Typhoon Lionrock, and d Typhoon
Kompasu. Results correspond to the probability

staring from 35 to 45 N (Fig. 7). We find that all the four
typhoons during their location below 39 N do not bring
substantial precipitations to the land over northern
Japan. T1607 brought the highest amount of precipitation, while T1611 brought comparably the lowest
amount.
Figure 8 shows the longitudinal averaged precipitations
at different latitudes starting from 39 to 45 N during thepassage of each typhoon through various latitudinal locations staring from 35 to 45 N. For T1607 and T1609, astrong propagating precipitation region is observed when
the typhoon locations were at 38–41 N and at 43 N,
while for the T1610, the strong propagating signal wasobserved at 38–43 N, and for T1611, it was 39–40 N.
This implies that all the four typhoons reaching 39 N
carried large amount of precipitation to the land overnorthern Japan. It is noted that the precipitation areas
generally extend to the north of the typhoon centers.

Discussion
This paper investigated the temporal and spatial characteristics of precipitations induced by four typhoons landfalled over northern Japan. We first focused on the
distribution, extremes, duration, size, and frequency ofthe precipitations induced by each typhoon. Our results
indicate that two typhoons (T1607 and T1610) carried

relatively high amount of precipitations (> 200 mm) to
the landfall regions in Hokkaido and Tohoku regions
while other two (T1609 and T16100) brought relatively
less amount (> 150 mm). T1610 brought stronger precipitations with intensity above 120 mm h–1, while others
carried the same with 55–75 mm h–1. T1610 carried
long-lived localized precipitation, while T1607 andT1611 brought short-lived widespread precipitation.
Next, we examined the duration and size of heavy precipitations associated with each typhoon. We find that the
typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido region exhibit similar
characteristics of precipitation duration (Fig. 4a, b, d),while the typhoon landfalled over Tohoku region shows
relatively long-lived precipitation durations (Fig. 4c). However, all the four typhoons show a robust feature in the
precipitation sizes over northern Japan. We also analyzed
the duration and size of heavy precipitations with different
thresholds starting from 70 to 99% considering threetyphoons (Typhoon Chanthu, Typhoon Mindulle, and Typhoon Kompasu) together over Hokkaido and shown in
Fig. 9. Results indicated that in the combined case over
Hokkaido, the typhoon-induced precipitations with intensity higher than 95th percentile lasted up to 6 h, while theprecipitations with intensity higher than 50th percentile
tend to be long-lived and continued up to 12 h (Fig. 9a).
The size of the typhoon-induced precipitations in theNayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 6 Duration-intensity characteristics from a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, c Typhoon Lionrock, and d Typhoon Kompasu. Resultscorrespond to the probability

combined case over Hokkaido showed more frequent localized heavy precipitations with spatial scales within 20
km2 (Fig. 9b). Overall results indicated that the characteristics of precipitation duration and sizes in the combinedcases are mostly same as of individual typhoon landfalledover Hokkaido. To understand the mechanism on why do
the typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido region exhibit
similar precipitation duration characteristics, we analyzed
the atmospheric water vapor from the 3 hourly forecast

Japanese Reanalysis (JRA-55, Kobayashi et al. 2015) data
of JMA during the passage of each individual typhoon
over northern Japan (Fig. 10). We find that the supply of
atmospheric moisture plays an important rule to maintainthe precipitation duration. A closer investigation in Fig. 10shows that all the four typhoon supplied continuous moisture and formed peak. This possibly brought continuous
precipitations up to certain duration and then decreased
as the moisture supply gradually decreased in time (Fig.

Fig. 7 Area-averaged precipitation amount (accumulated) during the passage of each typhoon through different latitudes. The right side figure
shows the typhoon tracks from best-track data. The area corresponds to the land over northern Japan (highlighted as purple colour box in rightside figure)Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 8 Longitudinal averaged precipitation amount at different latitudes from a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, c Typhoon Lionrock, andd Typhoon Kompasu passing through different latitudes starting from 39 to 45 N

Fig. 9 a Duration and b size of heavy precipitations with different
thresholds considering three typhoons (Typhoon Chanthu, Typhoon
Mindulle, and Typhoon Kompasu) together over Hokkaido

10). We further explored the precipitation duration versus
peak intensity characteristics in each typhoon. Our results
indicate that the occurrence of heavy precipitations withintensity higher than 20–30 mm h–1 (~ 99th percentile) is
more frequent and last 6 to 9 ho over northern Japan (Fig.
6). It should be noted that large amount of atmosphericmoisture over any particular region is mostly available for
6–9 h for each typhoon (Fig. 10). This could be the reason
that each typhoon carried heaviest precipitations for 6–9
h. The availability of moisture during T1607 and T1609
also shows peaks similar to its precipitation durationintensity behavior (Fig. 6a, b and Fig. 10a, b). In case of
T1610, the peak in moisture availability is relatively earlier
compare to T1607 and T1609 (Fig. 10c), implying relatively earlier in peak duration precipitations (Fig. 6c). The
moisture availability in case T1611 also shows some peaks
although they are very low (Fig. 10d).
These results are important to enhance the understanding of how vulnerable the landfall region will be.
Kamahori and Arakawa (2018) discussed the return
period of typhoon-induced annual maximum precipitations and highlighted the occurrence of such extremes
once in 50 years possible cause flashflood. Moreover,Morimoto et al. (2019) reported forest damages overnorthern Japan due to Typhoon Songda (2004). It is apparent that the average surface temperature across theglobe is increasing, thus intensifying the extreme precipitation events (IPCC 2014; Nayak and Takemi 2019c).

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

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Fig. 10 Atmospheric water vapour from the 3 hourly forecast JRA-55 dataset during the passage of a Typhoon Chanthu, b Typhoon Mindulle, cTyphoon Lionrock, and d Typhoon Kompasu

Several studies also highlighted that the extreme weather
events such as typhoons, floods, and heavy precipitation
events over Japan would be more intense due to warming (Nayak and Dairaku 2016; Kanada et al. 2017; Nayaket al. 2018; Kawase et al. 2020). Likewise, various studies
reported that typhoons in future warming climate are
expected to carry more precipitations to landfall regions(Takemi et al. 2016a; Kanada et al. 2017; Nayak and
Takemi 2019a). To reveal and better characterize suchfeatures, application of climate model is needed. So, we
believe that our study gives a first step towards a description of the spatio-temporal characteristics oftyphoon-induced precipitations and can be used toevaluate the model results for the assessment of
typhoon-induced precipitation-related disasters in future
warming climate.

Conclusions
In this study, we examined the long-lasting and widespread extreme precipitations carried by four typhoons
in August 2016 over northern Japan from the very highspatial resolution rain gauge-radar precipitation analysis
data. The results indicate that the durations of the extreme precipitations induced by the three typhoons
landfalling over Hokkaido region exhibit similar features,
while the typhoon landfalled over Tohoku region shows

relatively long-lived extreme precipitation durations.
However, all the four typhoons show similar spatial
structure of the typhoon-induced precipitations overnorthern Japan. All the four typhoons also carried longlived precipitations which last up to a day or longer andmore frequent localized precipitations than widespread
precipitations. The frequencies of precipitations withintensity up to ~ 30 mm h–1 are similar for all the four
typhoons. The occurrence of extremely heavy precipitations (higher than 99th percentile) carried out by all thefour typhoons is mostly last up to 6–9 h. These features
may explain the excessive precipitations caused by each
typhoon. The results of the precipitation structure during the passage of each typhoon through different latitudinal locations indicate that all the four typhoons
reproduce heavy precipitations over the land in northern
Japan when they reach at 39 N. Overall, the important
information contained in this study is the duration andsize of the precipitations induced by the four typhoons
vary depending on the landfalling region. However, theprecipitation characteristics associated with all the typhoons landfalled over Hokkaido show mostly robustfeatures. More research is needed to get a better understanding of the processes involved in typhoon-induced
precipitation by using some very high resolution climate
model and their response to future climate change.

Nayak and Takemi Progress in Earth and Planetary Science(2020) 7:39

Abbreviations
TC: Tropical cyclone; Radar-AMeDAS: Radar Automated Meteorological Data
Acquisition System; JMA: Japan Meteorological Agency; T1607: Typhoon
Chanthu; T1609: Typhoon Mindulle; T1610: Typhoon Lionrock;T1611: Typhoon Kompasu; IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change; RSMC: Regional Specialized Meteorological Center
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the TOUGOU program and funded by the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Governmentof Japan. Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) is acknowledged for providing
Radar/Rain gauge-Analyzed Precipitation product.
Authors’ contributions
SN proposed the topic, designed the study, analyzed the data, and drafted
the manuscript. TT helped in the interpretation and the construction of themanuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This study was supported by the TOUGOU program funded by the Ministryof Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Government ofJapan.
Availability of data and materials
The Radar/Rain gauge-Analyzed Precipitation dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is obtained from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA,
www.jmbsc.or.jp).
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interest.
Received: 5 March 2020 Accepted: 25 June 2020

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