## 5 Conclusions  
Based on ground-based multichannel microwave radiometer data, radiosonde observations and precipitation data from meteorological stations in the eastern QTP, the distribution characteristics and evolution laws of atmospheric vertical structure, convective instability indices and water vapour and liquid water content during the East Asian winter monsoon were studied, and the applications of MWR in short-term snow forecast  
Figure 11: Comparison of temperature (**a**), vapour density (**b**), liquid water content (**c**), and relative humidity (**d**) profiles before and during the snow process. The time instant \(t\)\(t\)(th) = 0 h represents one hour before the precipitation process.  
Figure 12: Scattergrams of _LWC_ against _PWV_ (**a**) and _PWV_ (and _LWC_) against \(R\) (**b**) for snowy days.  
ing and quantitative snowfall estimation have been discussed. The main findings can be summarized as follows.  
1. The average values of \(T\) deviation between MWR and RAOB were less than 0.5 K at most altitudes and sampling periods, meeting the deviation requirements of meteorological applications;
2. The _CAPE_ values during the EAWM under snowy conditions were larger than those on clear days, especially during the period of 13:00-19:00 (UTC+8). For clear-sky, the _CAPE_ during the EAWM was much larger than that during the summer monsoon. This indicates that the QTP weather system is changeable, and there is still high convective instability on sunny days;
3. The water vapour and liquid water in winter are much smaller than that of the summer monsoon. The winter _LWC_ was an order of magnitude lower than the summer average;
4. _PWV_, _LWC_, _CAPE_, _DCAPE_ and \(BT\) at the sampling channel of 30.0 GHz and 51.24 GHz had the potential to be used for quantitative precipitation forecasting.  
The meteorological characteristics retrieved from ground-based MWR in this study are preliminary. More monitoring experiments will be carried out in the future to jointly reveal the atmospheric thermodynamic and dynamic characteristics of the QTP. For more accurate atmospheric detection, a Ka-band radar will be used to detect cloud information to improve sounding accuracy in the future.  
Conceptualization, J.W. and G.W.; methodology, J.W. and Y.S.; validation, J.W., Y.S. and Z.Q.; formal analysis, Y.S.; investigation, Y.S., J.Z. and Z.Q.; resources, J.W. and G.W.; data curation, J.W.; writing--original draft preparation, Y.S.; writing--review and editing, J.W. and Y.S.; supervision, J.W.; project administration, J.W.; funding acquisition, J.W. and G.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program (Grant No. 2017 YFC0403600); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52009059); Major Science and Technology Project of Qinghai Province(2021-SF-A6); Key Research and Development Program of Ningxia (2020 BCF01002); the Fund Program of State key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering (2022-KY-04) at Tsinghua University; and the State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture at Qinghai University.  
Not applicable.  
The data cannot be shared temporarily.  
The authors would like to thank [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON], and all other members of the Research Group from Tsinghua University and Qinghai University for contributions to the field experiment, without whom this work would not be possible.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.