South China is characterized by abundant and complex precipitation, with frequent typhoons, heavy rainfall, and pronounced extreme events, making it an ideal region for precipitation microphysics research. This study uses rainfall observations from an OTT Parsivel2 (Parsivel) laser disdrometer and a Micro Rain Radar–2 (MRR–2) collected in Zhuhai during 2022–2023 to analyze the characteristics of stratiform rainfall (SR) and convective rainfall (CR). The results show that, although SR lasts longer, CR contributes much more to the total accumulated rainfall. In SR, samples with rain rate (RR) 8 mm h−1 represent only 7% of occurrences but contribute more than 45% of the accumulated rainfall. CR is characterized by a larger mass-weighted mean diameter (Dm), while SR shows a higher normalized intercept parameter (Nw). In SR, Dm increases with RR, whereas Nw changes little; in CR, both Dm and Nw increase with RR. Finally, by analyzing temporal/spatial collocated vertical rain profiles from MRR and Global Precipitation Measurement Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (GPM DPR), the results show that CR exhibits larger RR, radar reflectivity and stronger vertical variability than SR, along with greater variations in Dm and log10(Nw). Ground-based MRR also provides an independent vertical reference for evaluating DPR-derived precipitation structure and interpreting the consistency and discrepancies between satellite and ground-based observations. Although the results are not conclusive due to a limited number of events, both instruments capture distinct microphysical characteristics in the analyzed SR and CR cases, despite differences in their retrieved vertical DSD structures.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.