Evidence for a Strong Association of Short-Duration Intense Rainfall with Urbanization in the Beijing Urban Area

Correlations of the urban heat island intensity (UHII) and key surface variables with the short-duration intense rainfall (SDIR) events are examined for the Beijing urban areas by applying hourly data of a high-density automatic weather station (AWS) network. Higher frequencies (amounts) of the SDIR events are found in or near the central urban area, and most of the SDIR events begin to appear in late evening and nighttime, but tend to end in late night and early morning. Correlations of the UHII with the SDIR frequency (amount) are all highly significant for more than 3 h ahead of the beginning of the SDIR events. Although the UHII at immediate hours (