A Climate Perspective on the 2025 North China Record-breaking Extreme Rainfall: Analogues and Future Risks

In late July 2025, North China was struck by an unprecedented extreme rainfall event, with rainfall intensity about 1.5 times the climatological mean and the affected area nearly 4 times larger than typical. To investigate the underlying mechanisms and future risks, we conduct a comprehensive diagnosis combining moisture budget analysis with atmospheric circulation analogues. We find that the event was driven by the historically most extreme vertical velocity and columnar water vapor. The joint influence of a northward-shifted Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) and Typhoon Co-may formulated a strong pressure gradient, establishing a low-level jet that coupled with upper-level divergence. Quantitative analysis reveals that the vertical nonlinear term contributed 33% to the precipitation, which doubles the average of the top seven historical extreme events (16%) since 1979 and thus highlights a hyper-efficient dynamic-thermodynamic coupling process distinct from typical historical cases. Historical composite analysis demonstrates that circulation regimes resembling this "Typhoon-WPSH" pattern consistently produce ~28% more rainfall over North China than climatological conditions. While model projections show large uncertainties, the atmospheric circulation driving the 2025 extreme rainfall is generally projected to occur less frequently under future warming. Counteracting this potential decline, thermodynamic moistening will boost the associated rainfall intensity by roughly 23%. Ultimately, the future risk profile in East Asia is characterized not by more frequent events, but by a heightened vulnerability to exceptionally severe, low-probability precipitation extremes.