Abstract
Sensitivity of precipitation simulations to the uncertainty of vertical structure of initial temperature or water vapour conditions is examined in this study by conducting a series of two‐dimensional cloud‐resolving model simulations. The perturbation experiments are perturbed by either initial temperature or initial water vapour in different vertical layers and are compared with the control experiment. The perturbations of initial temperature and water vapour are significantly smaller than observed temperature and water vapour errors. The results show that the precipitation simulations are much affected by these small perturbations of initial temperature and water vapour conditions when the spatial and temporal scales are less than 500 km and 4 hours respectively. The zonal scales of the precipitation simulations sensitive to uncertainty of initial temperature conditions are significantly smaller when the initial temperature is perturbed in the upper troposphere than when it is perturbed in the lower troposphere. The precipitation simulations are insensitive to the uncertainty of vertical profiles of initial water vapour conditions. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society