Impact of Aerosol Shortwave Radiative Heating on Entrainment in the Atmospheric Convective Boundary Layer: A Large-Eddy Simulation Study

Entrainment is critical to the development of the atmospheric convective boundary layer (CBL), but little is known about how entrainment is impacted by the aerosol radiative effect. An aerosol radiation transfer model is used in conjunction with large-eddy simulation (LES) to quantify the impact of aerosol shortwave radiative heating on entrainment and thermodynamics of an idealized dry CBL under aerosol-loading conditions. An entrainment equation is derived within the framework of a zero-order model (ZOM) with the aerosol radiative heating effect included; the equation is then examined against the LES outputs for varying aerosol optical depths (AODs) and free-atmosphere stratification scenarios. The results show that the heat flux profiles become more nonlinear in shape as compared to the case of the clean (no aerosol pollution) CBL, with the degree of nonlinearity being highly dependent on the AOD of the layer for the given type of radiation-absorbing aerosols. As AOD increases, less solar radiation reaches the surface and thus the surface heat flux becomes smaller, and both actual (LES) and ZOM-derived entrainment flux ratios decrease. This trend is opposite to the clean CBL where the LES-predicted flux ratios show an increasing trend with diminishing surface heat flux, while the ZOM-calculated flux ratio remains constant. The modified dimensionless entrainment rate closely follows the -1 power law with a modified Richardson number. The study suggests that including the aerosol radiative effect may improve numerical air quality predictions for heavy-air-pollution events.