In July 2018, heavy rainfalls occurred throughout the Japanese islands, especially in the western and central parts of Japan, under the influences of Typhoon Prapiroon (2018) and the Baiu frontal activity, and caused extreme river discharge, flooding, and landslides in many places and fatalities of greater than 200, which is the worst disaster in the recent three decades in Japan. After the heavy rainfall event, record-breaking, extremely hot weather follows. About a year before the heavy rainfall event, the July 2017 Heavy Rainfall event occurred in the northern part of Kyushu Island; long-lived stationary convective systems caused extreme rainfall, leading to flooding, landslides, and forest damages at local scales. Those extreme rainfalls in 2017 and 2018 result from linear convective systems that are a type of linearly organized mesoscale convective systems.
Such linear convective systems often develop under the influences of stationary fronts and tropical cyclones and have been investigated as case studies on specific extreme events; however, the behavior, maintenance mechanisms, and environmental properties of the linear convective systems have not been examined in detail. In addition, the heavy rainfall events throughout Japan in July 2018 were affected by various meteorological conditions with spatial scales ranging from planetary-scales to mesoscales, and thus integrated views at various scales are required. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change on the development of such extreme events should also be taken into account. In this special edition jointly coordinated with Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, we publish papers on generations of heavy rainfalls and extreme weathers, the properties and mechanisms of linear convective systems, predictability of heavy rainfall events and extreme weather, the impacts of climate change, focusing on recent extreme events such as the heavy rainfall events that occurred in Japan in July 2018 and the following extreme heat waves, the July 2017 Northern Kyushu Heavy Rainfall event, and other extreme weather phenomena not only in Japan but also in East Asia and other parts of the world.

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This paper is the first publication presenting the predictability of the record-breaking rainfall in Japan in July 2018 (RJJ18), the severest flood-related disaster since 1982. Of the three successive precipitation stages in RJJ18, this study investigates synoptic-scale predictability of the third-stage precipitation using the near-real-time global atmospheric data assimilation system named NEXRA. With NEXRA, intense precipitation in western Japan on July 6 was well predicted 3 days in advance. Comparing forecasts at different initial times revealed that the predictability of the intense rains was tied to the generation of a low-pressure system in the middle of the frontal system over the Sea of Japan. Observation impact estimates showed that radiosondes in Kyusyu and off the east coast of China significantly reduced the forecast errors. Since the forecast errors grew more rapidly during RJJ18, data assimilation played a crucial role in improving the predictability.

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The high temperature event in July 2018 caused record-breaking human damage throughout Japan. Large-ensemble historical simulations with a high-resolution atmospheric general circulation model showed that the occurrence rate of this event under the condition of external forcings in July 2018 was approximately 20%. This high probability was a result of the high-pressure systems both in the upper and lower troposphere in July 2018. The event attribution approach based on the large-ensemble simulations with and without human-induced climate change indicated the following: (1) The event would never have happened without anthropogenic global warming. (2) The strength of the two-tiered high-pressure systems was also at an extreme level and at least doubled the level of event probability, which was independent of global warming. Moreover, a set of the large-ensemble dynamically downscaled outputs revealed that the mean annual occurrence of extremely hot days in Japan will be expected to increase by 1.8 times under a global warming level of 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

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An extreme rainfall event occurred over western Japan and the adjacent Tokai region mainly in early July, named “the Heavy Rain Event of July 2018”, which caused widespread havoc. It was followed by heat wave that persisted in many regions over Japan in setting the highest temperature on record since 1946 over eastern Japan as the July and summertime means. The rain event was attributable to two extremely moist airflows of tropical origins confluent persistently into western Japan and large-scale ascent along the stationary Baiu front. The heat wave was attributable to the enhanced surface North Pacific Subtropical High and upper-tropospheric Tibetan High, with a prominent barotropic anticyclonic anomaly around the Korean Peninsula. The consecutive occurrence of these extreme events was related to persistent meandering of the upper-level subtropical jet, indicating remote influence from the upstream. The heat wave can also be influenced by enhanced summertime convective activity around the Philippines and possibly by extremely anomalous warmth over the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude in July 2018. The global warming can also influence not only the heat wave but also the rain event, consistent with a long-term increasing trend in intensity of extreme precipitation observed over Japan.

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Extremely heavy rainfall events occurred over western Japan in early July 2018. This study assesses the predictability of these events for the period 5-7 July using three operational medium-range ensemble forecasts available from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), and ensemble simulations conducted with an ECMWF model and NCEP operational ensemble initial conditions. All three operational ensembles predicted extreme rainfall on 5-6 July at lead times of ≤ 6 days, indicating the high predictability of this event. However, the extreme rainfall event of 6-7 July was less predictable. The NCEP forecasts, initialised on 30 June, performed better at predicting this event than the other operational forecasts. The JMA forecasts initialised on 1 July showed improved predictability; however, the ECMWF forecasts initialised after 30 June showed only gradual improvements as the initialisation time progressed. The ensemble simulations revealed that the lower predictability of the rainfall in the ECMWF forecasts on 6-7 July can be attributed to the model rather than to the initial conditions. Accurate prediction of the North Pacific Subtropical High is a prerequisite for accurate prediction of such extreme rainfall events.

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During a torrential rainfall event in early July 2018, profound enhancement of moisture influx from the south and its convergence occurred over western Japan, which is investigated in this study on the basis of objective analysis and forecast data from the Japan Meteorological Agency Meso-Scale Model. The heavy rainfall over western Japan is found to accompany enhanced oceanic evaporation extensively around Japan, especially around the Kuroshio and entirely over the Sea of Japan. Linear decompositions of the anomalous moisture flux and surface latent heat flux anomalies applied to the high-resolution data reveal that the intensified speed of the low-level southerlies was the primary factor for the pronounced enhancement of both the moisture transport into the heavy rainfall region, especially in its western portion, and evaporation around the Kuroshio into the southerlies. An additional contribution is found from positive sea-surface temperature anomalies to the enhanced southerly moisture inflow into the eastern portion of the rainfall region. These findings have been confirmed through a backward trajectory analysis, which suggests that anomalous moisture supply to air parcels into the rainfall region primarily through the enhanced wind-forced evaporation roughly corresponds to about 10% of the precipitable water anomaly over western Japan.

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During summer 2018, zonally averaged tropospheric temperatures were higher than normal in the northern mid-latitudes, and this contributed to the extreme warmth experienced in eastern and western Japan. These northern-mid-latitudes warm anomalies, along with enhanced convective activity in the northern subtropics, persisted from autumn 2017 until autumn 2018. This paper demonstrates that both the persistent zonal pattern, and the circulation anomaly pattern, that developed during summer 2018 are well predicted by a reforecast experiment using an operational seasonal prediction system. As variation in zonally averaged convective activity in the northern subtropics is statistically closely related to northern-mid-latitude tropospheric warming in all seasons, we hypothesize that the former is likely to be a key influence on the latter. We found a weakening of northern-mid-latitude tropospheric warming in a sensitivity experiment in which tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are nudged to the climatology and enhancement of convective activity in the northern tropics is weakened. These results suggest that SST anomalies in the tropical Pacific, which are well predicted by our reforecast experiment, contribute to the successful prediction of northern-mid-latitude tropospheric warming.

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Heavy rain in western Japan was broadly induced by the stagnation of the Baiu front during 5-7 July 2018. This study hypothesizes that cold air advection over the Sea of Japan intensified by Typhoon Prapiroon (Typhoon No. 7) was one of the triggering factors for the formation process of the Baiu front over western Japan. Typhoon Prapiroon passed over the Sea of Japan on 4 July and became extratropical at approximately 40°N on 5 July. During its passage, the strong southward pressure gradient force to the north of Typhoon Prapiroon broke down the convergence line of the Baiu front that remained at approximately 45°N before 4 July and thick cold air from the Okhotsk High flowed over the Sea of Japan. The Okhotsk High expanded toward the Sea of Japan and enhanced cold air advection to the north of western Japan. As a result, the Baiu front was stationary at approximately 35°N after 5 July. In addition, the westerly jet in the east of an upper-level trough deepened along the typhoon track was associated with the adiabatic component of the ascending motion over the isentropic upslope and was suggested to contribute to the maintenance of Baiu frontal convection.

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This study developed a rain-gauge-based hourly precipitation dataset to analyze the heavy precipitation event of July 2018 in Japan (H2018). We modified the APHRODITE algorithm to treat hourly precipitation data, and we detected orographically induced heavy precipitation patterns in western Japan. We compared the heavy precipitation pattern along with moisture transport with that of another disastrous precipitation event in 2014 over Hiroshima (H2014). It is evident that heavy precipitation occurred over a much wider area in Chugoku district during H2018 than in H2014, and extreme precipitation which exceeds 10mm/hr appeared three times in H2018 while at one time in H2014.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) were detected during two distinct episodes of heavy precipitation over Hiroshima, i.e., 19 August 2014 and 6 July 2018. Of the two events, the precipitation amount and the depth (height) of the AR were much greater in the latter. In the mid-troposphere, abundant moisture and high equivalent potential temperatures along the Meiyu frontal system can produce a large area of continuous heavy precipitation. The intensive hourly rainfall dataset developed in this study will be useful for investigations of AR and meso-scale system that affect heavy precipitation and validation of numerical models.

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This study investigates the influence of strong southerly moisture flux on an extreme rainfall event over western Japan in early July 2018, by using a global atmospheric reanalysis dataset. During its peak period from 5 to 7 July, extensive and unprecedented rainfall observed along the well-defined quasi-stationary Baiu front was attributed to two branches of extremely moist inflow from the southern confluence into western Japan. One was a shallow southerly airstream enhanced by the surface North Pacific Subtropical High, and the other was a deeper southwesterly airstream accompanying enhanced convection over the East China Sea. Both the vertically integrated moisture flux from the south and its convergence into western Japan reached the highest levels for 60 years due to an overwhelming contribution from the intensified southerlies. Anomalous diabatic heating associated with the active convection over the East China Sea acted to maintain the southwesterly moisture flux by inducing low-level cyclonic potential vorticity anomalies. During the rainfall event, a strong meander of the upper-level subtropical jet associated with the intensified surface North Pacific Subtropical High accompanied an amplified upper-level trough over the Korean Peninsula, which acted to induce ascent dynamically along the Baiu front.

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The western North Pacific (WNP) exhibited markedly enhanced tropical cyclone (TC, typhoon) activity during the boreal summer (June–August) of 2018; 18 named typhoons were generated and 13 of these approached near Japan, causing serious damage and disruption in the country. During the summer of 2018, warm sea surface temperature persisted over the tropical Northeastern Pacific, which are typical oceanic conditions of a positive phase of the Pacific meridional mode (PMM), while no El Niño condition was observed. The Japan Meteorological Agency seasonal forecast system successfully predicted the enhanced TC activity in the WNP as well as associated seasonal characteristics such as a deep monsoon trough and active convection. Results of sensitivity experiments clearly indicate that the positive phase of the PMM played a major role in establishing the active TC conditions in the WNP during the summer of 2018 and reveal predictable seasonal processes of TC activity (genesis and tracks) during the summer of 2018, when there was no El Niño.

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This study documented the environmental properties of precipitation systems that produced the July 2018 Heavy Rainfall event in Japan. The gridded analysis data were used to diagnose the potential for the development of convective systems in terms of thermodynamic environmental indices. Precipitable water vapor was extremely larger than that seen in the climatology of warm-season quasi-stationary convective clusters (QSCCs). Such an extreme moisture content was realized by very humid conditions at the middle-levels. In contrast, temperature lapse rate in a convectively unstable layer was not so significant in comparison to the QSCC climatology. Among the environmental indices, K Index was shown to describe the potential for the rainfall development. Based on the analysis, the roles of moisture content and profile on the convection development were discussed. It was suggested that the middle-level high humidity contributes to the occurrence of the present heavy rainfall by minimizing negative effects of environmental mixing and by decreasing vertical displacements to reach levels of free convection. In regions where heavy rainfall occurred, an automated algorithm detected the development of QSCCs, which were mostly categorized as a linear type.

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The predictability of the Heavy Rain Event in July 2018 is examined by forecast experiments with an operational global atmospheric forecast model. Experiments from different initial times show that the overall rainfall distribution at the peak on 6 July can be predicted from 12 UTC, June 30, and later. In the successful forecasts, the track error of Typhoon Prapiroon against the best track is small. In the experiments with longer lead times, by contrast, the Baiu frontal zone has a northwared bias with less precipitation, and Prapiroon hardly develop and migrates westward. Poor track forecasts seem to be related to the limited vertical development of the vortex. Near surface equivalent potential tempeature and Q-vector analysis show that Prapiroon act to intensify the Baiu frontal zone. In conclusion, the correct track forecast is essential for Baiu frontogenesis and the formation of heavy precipitation in western Japan.

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