Direct Radiative Effect (DRE) of Dust Aerosols on West African and East Asian Monsoon: The Role of Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions

The direct radiative effect (DRE) of dust aerosols on the West African and East Asian monsoons is analyzed using the Community Atmosphere Model version 4 containing the dust aerosol parameterization module with and without the coupling of ocean-atmosphere processes, respectively. The atmospheric model (AM) and the ocean-atmosphere coupled model (CM) can both capture the major spatial characteristics of dust aerosols and summer monsoons over West Africa and East Asia. Our results show that the DREs on the West African (WASM) and East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) are more significant in the CM simulations compared to the AM simulations, causing the strengthening of the WASM and weakening of the EASM. The DRE of dust aerosols induces a negative radiative forcing leading to a surface cooling of the downstream ocean of the dust source region when the coupled ocean feedback is added. The distinct DRE of dust aerosols on the WASM and EASM are resulted from the relative locations of the ocean cooling regions to the respective monsoon regions. This study shows the importance of the coupled ocean-atmosphere processes in the DRE and its influences on the WASM and EASM systems.

Automated summary

The direct radiative effect (DRE) of dust aerosols on the West African and East Asian monsoons was analyzed using the CAM4 model. The results showed that the DREs on the West African and East Asian monsoons were more significant when the ocean-atmosphere coupling was considered, leading to the strengthening of the West African monsoon and weakening of the East Asian monsoon.