Abstract: The paper aims to study on the spatial pattern characteristics of east china summer rainstorm events. The daily precipitation reanalysis data at 0.25×0.25 latitude-longitude grid in 1961-2010 was used, which is based on more than 2 400 weather observation stations in China. The landscape pattern analysis tool (fragstat4.2) was utilized to obtain the rainstorm patches parameters. In the study east China was divided into 3 areas named Southern Area (SA), Central Area (CA) and Northern Area (NA) considering climatic division research results, and the spatial independent rainstorm events characteristics are represented by the rainstorm patch pattern parameter such as patches count, average patches area index, etc., the main conclusions are as follows: 1) there is reverse variation trend between the count of independent rainstorm events and its frequency. With the increase of daily mean and daily sum of rainstorm patch area index, their frequency decrease in exponential form. 2) There are more rainstorm events in the CA (NA) during late June to early July (late July).  In the early summer (late summer) average rainstorm area index in CA (NA) is largest among 3 areas. 3) Since 1990s, SA and CA were more likely affected by rainstorm, which was mainly caused by the frequency increasing of individual rainstorm events. Resulting from the smaller coverage of individual rainstorm events, NA experienced fewer rainstorms in 2000s. The conclusion of this paper deepens the understanding on the rainstorm events variation in eastern China and has a good application prospect in the flood disaster prevention and water resources management. The analysis method also is reference for similar research.
Key words：rainstorm； eastern China； spatial pattern analysis； summer