Identification

Title

Aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation in eastern China: Results from bin and bulk microphysics

Abstract

Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with a spectral-bin microphysics ("SBM") and measurements from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Mobile Facility field campaign in China (AMF-China), the authors examine aerosol indirect effects (AIE) in the typical cloud regimes of the warm and cold seasons in Southeast China: deep convective clouds (DCC) and stratus clouds (SC), respectively. Comparisons with a two-moment bulk microphysics ("Bulk") are performed to gain insights for improving bulk schemes in estimating AIE in weather and climate simulations. For the first time, measurements of aerosol and cloud properties acquired in China are used to evaluate model simulations to better understand aerosol impact on clouds in the southeast of China. It is found that changes in cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentration significantly change the timing of storms, the spatial and temporal distributions of precipitation, the frequency distribution of precipitation rate, as well as cloud base and top heights for the DCC, but not for the SC. Increasing CCN increases cloud droplet number (Nc) and mass concentrations, decreases raindrop number concentration, and delays the onset of precipitation. Compared with SBM, Bulk predicts much higher Nc and the opposite CCN effects on convection and heavy rain, stemming from the fixed CCN prescribed in Bulk. CCN have a significant effect on ice microphysical properties with SBM but not Bulk and different condensation/deposition freezing parameterizations employed could be the main reason. This study provided insights to further improve the bulk scheme to better account for aerosol-cloud interactions in regional and global climate simulations, which will be the focus for a follow-on paper.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7p55p6x

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-01-19T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact