4.6 Article

Type-Dependent Impact of Aerosols on Precipitation Associated With Deep Convective Cloud Over East Asia

Journal

Publisher

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021JD036127

Keywords

aerosol-cloud-precipitation; deep convective cloud; AOD; precipitation frequency and amount; aerosol types

Funding

  1. NASA ROSES TASNPP grant [80NSSC18K0985]
  2. NSF [AGS-2103820]
  3. NOAA [NA19OAR4310243]
  4. National Science Foundation
  5. Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering in the University of California, Los Angeles

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The impact of aerosols on precipitation is a significant uncertainty in climate simulation and projection. Observational evidence suggests that dust and polluted continental aerosols increase heavy rain, while elevated smoke tends to suppress deep convective precipitation. Different aerosol types have varying effects on precipitation over land and ocean.
Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions represent one of the most significant uncertainties in climate simulation and projection. In particular, the impact of aerosols on precipitation is highly uncertain due to limited and conflicting observational evidence. A major challenge is to distinguish the effects of different types of aerosols on precipitation associated with deep convective clouds, which produces most of the precipitation in East Asia. Here, we use 9-yr observations from multiple satellite-borne sensors and find that the occurrent frequency of heavy rain increases while that of light rain decreases with the increase of aerosol optical depth (AOD) for dust and polluted continental aerosol types. For average hourly precipitation amount, elevated smoke tends to suppress deep convective precipitation, while dust and polluted continental aerosols enhance precipitation mainly through the invigoration of deep convection. The invigoration effect is more significant for clouds with higher cloud base temperature (CBT), while no significant invigoration is observed when CBT is <12 degrees C. A great contrast is found for the response of average hourly precipitation amount to aerosols over ocean and land. While the prevailing continental aerosol types other than smoke increase precipitation, the marine aerosols first enhance and then inhibit precipitation with the increase of AOD. Moreover, our analysis indicates that the above-mentioned enhancement and inhibition effects on precipitation are mainly caused by aerosols themselves, rather than by the covariation of meteorological factors. These observed relationships between different aerosol types and precipitation frequency and amount provide valuable constraints on the model forecasting of precipitation.

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