The Yangtze River Basin(YZRB) has the highest concentration of precipitation in China.Against the background of climate warming, short-duration heavy rainfall (SDHR) tends to increase.In the main flood season (June, July and August) of 2020, there were several rounds of heavy precipitation in the YZRB, and the basin flood level was lower than only two years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, namely 1954 and 1998.Based on the hourly precipitation data collected by the National Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration, this study analyzes the temporal and spatial distributions of SDHR and statistical characteristics of different type short-duration heavy rainfall events (SDHREs) in the upper YZRB (YR-A), middle YZRB (YR-B) and lower YZRB (YR-C).The results show the following:1) Due to the influence of terrain, the frequency and intensity of precipitation in the YZRB mountainous areas increase, while the terrain effect increases the frequency of SDHR in the mountainous areas, thereby enhancing the precipitation amount of SDHR in these areas.In addition, the spatial distribution of precipitation intensity in the YZRB depends on the spatial distribution of precipitation amount of SDHR.2) The diurnal variations of both precipitation amount and frequency of SDHR in the YR-A, YR-B and YR-C areas show a bimodal pattern, and the bimodal time tends to shift from night to day from west to east in the YZRB, which is related to the regional difference of diurnal variation of convective activity.Moreover, the precipitation amount and frequency of SDHR exhibit similar diurnal variations, indicating that the precipitation amount of SDHR mainly originates from the contribution of its precipitation frequency.3) Among the three types of SDHRE, the frequency of the growth type is the highest (～62.6%), followed by the burst type (～26.9%), with that of the continuous type being the lowest (～10.5%).However, the high incidence precipitation amount of the burst-type SDHRE is the smallest (～30 mm), while that of the continuous-type SDHRE is the largest (～90 mm), and the high incidence precipitation amount of the growth-type SDHRE is between the two (40—60 mm).4) The spatial distribution of precipitation amount of different types of SDHREs mainly depends on the spatial distribution of their precipitation frequency.Since the precipitation frequency of the growth-type SDHRE is generally higher than those of the burst-type and continuous-type SDHREs, its precipitation amount is also greater than those of the latter two types.Note that the Dabie Mountain area is a high incidence area of the continuous-type SDHRE, due to its terrain effect, while the burst-type SDHRE is more likely to form high precipitation intensity locally.