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Published 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Theoretical basis for convective invigoration due to increased aerosol concentration

Abstract

The potential effects of increased aerosol loading on the development of deep convective clouds and resulting precipitation amounts are studied by employing the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model as a detailed high-resolution cloud resolving model (CRM) with both detailed bulk and bin microphysics schemes. Both models include a physically-based activation scheme that incorporates a size-resolved aerosol population. We demonstrate that the aerosol-induced effect is controlled by the balance between latent heating and the increase in condensed water aloft, each having opposing effects on buoyancy. It is also shown that under polluted conditions, increases in the CCN number concentration reduce the cumulative precipitation due to the competition between the sedimentation and evaporation/sublimation timescales. The effect of an increase in the IN number concentration on the dynamics of deep convective clouds is small and the resulting decrease in domain-averaged cumulative precipitation is shown not to be statistically significant, but may act to suppress precipitation. It is also shown that even in the presence of a decrease in the domain-averaged cumulative precipitation, an increase in the precipitation variance, or in other words, andincrease in rainfall intensity, may be expected in more polluted environments, especially in moist environments. A significant difference exists between the predictions based on the bin and bulk microphysics schemes of precipitation and the influence of aerosol perturbations on updraft velocity within the convective core. The bulk microphysics scheme shows little change in the latent heating rates due to an increase in the CCN number concentration, while the bin microphysics scheme demonstrates significant increases in the latent heating aloft with increasing CCN number concentration. This suggests that even a detailed two-bulk microphysics scheme, coupled to a detailed activation scheme, may not be sufficient to predict small changes that result from perturbations in aerosol loading.

Additional Information

© 2011 Author(s). This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. Received: 3 January 2011; Published in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss.: 24 January 2011 Revised: 9 May 2011; Accepted: 27 May 2011; Published: 9 June 2011. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research grant N00014-10-1-0200. We thank Jerry Harrington, Hugh Morrison, Adrian Hill, and Graham Feingold for helpful discussions. Computations were carried out on the CITerra Dell Cluster of the Geological and Planetary Sciences Division at Caltech.

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