Impacts of Anthropogenic Emissions over South Asia on East Asian Spring Climate: Two Possible Dynamical Pathways

Both South Asia and East Asia are the most polluted regions of the world. Unlike East Asia, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over South Asia keeps increasing for all recent years, which calls for more attention. This study inves-tigates the impacts of anthropogenic emissions over South Asia on the downstream regional climate during spring with the Community Earth System Model 2 (CESM2). The model results suggest that South Asian pollutants have significant im-pacts on East Asian spring climate, and the impacts could be even larger than locally emitted aerosols. Two possible dynamical pathways (i.e., the northern and the southern pathways) bridging South Asian aerosol forcing and East Asian climate are proposed, and both ways are associated with the black carbon (BC)-induced climate feedbacks surrounding the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The northern pathway is mainly due to the TP warming induced by the BC snow darkening effect (SDE), which significantly reduces the surface air temperature (SAT) over northern East Asia. BC-induced TP warming increases the meridional thermal gradient and accelerates the midlatitude jet stream, which favors the cold-air advection over northern East Asia. The southern pathway is associated with the BC elevated heat pump hypothesis, which mainly affects the precipitation in southern East Asia. BC from South Asia accumulates near the south slope of TP, inducing an abnormal ascending motion near the Bay of Bengal. A compensating anomalous sinking motion is then forced in South China, which suppresses the precipitation there. A primary observational analysis is also performed to verify both dynami-cal pathways.

Automated summary

This study investigates the impacts of South Asian anthropogenic emissions on the spring climate in East Asia, proposing two potential pathways associated with the black carbon-induced climate feedbacks around the Tibetan Plateau. The northern pathway is mainly influenced by the TP warming induced by the BC snow darkening effect, while the southern pathway is associated with the BC elevated heat pump hypothesis, affecting precipitation in Southern East Asia.