Abstract:The Meiyu frontal heavy rainfall is a strong precipitation phenomenon characteristic of China’s Yangtze River Basin and the East Asian Region. Conducting integrative field experiments on Meiyu frontal heavy rainfall to thoroughly study the thermodynamic and dynamic processes, moisture transport, microphysical structure, and their evolution mechanisms has important scientific value. In summer, over 40% of the moisture for precipitation in the Yangtze River Basin originates from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal in South Asia. Moreover, there is also a moisture pathway from the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, and more than 60% of the precipitation is closely related to the plateau and weather systems on its eastern side. Therefore, the observational study of the South Asian moisture transport pathway to the Yangtze River Basin and of the vertical structural evolution of eastward-moving plateau cloud clusters is very important. To this end, the Wuhan Heavy Rainfall Research Institute of the China Meteorological Administration conducted in-depth studies on the mechanism for moisture to be transported from South Asia and the southern slope of Qinghai-Xizang Plateau into the Yangtze River Basin, on the mechanism how eastward-moving plateau cloud clusters affect Meiyu frontal heavy rainfall, and on the frontal structure of the Meiyu frontal surface, cloud microphysical processes, and the upstream to downstream effects of the Meiyu frontal system. They have established a field experiment system for heavy rainfall spanning from moisture source regions and plateau-system source areas to the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, and carried out a series of field experiments, which include observation of Meiyu frontal surface and mesoscale systems of heavy rainfall, observation of typical orographic heavy rainfall, observation of the vertical structure of eastward-moving Plateau cloud clusters, observation of the characteristics and evolution of the moisture channel in the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, and tracking observation of extreme heavy rainfall systems. The research results can provide useful references for organizing similar experiments in the future.