Notes on state-of-the-art investigations of aerosol effects on precipitation: a critical review

By Alexander Khain. 2009

325 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is no agreement between the results of different studies as regards quantitative and even qualitative evaluation of aerosol effects on precipitation. While some observational and numerical studies report a decrease in precipitation in polluted areas, in some other observations and numerical studies aerosol-induced precipitation enhancement was reported. This study analyses possible reasons for the discrepancy between the results. The analysis of aerosol effects on precipitation is performed using the mass and heat budgets. The analysis is concentrated on clouds and cloud systems arising in the environment with relatively high freezing level. It is shown that for such clouds aerosols increase both the generation and the loss of the condensate mass. The net effect of aerosols on the precipitation depends on the environment conditions (air humidity, buoyancy, and wind shear) as well as on the cloud type determining whether the increase in the condensate generation or in the condensate loss will dominate with increase in the aerosol concentration. In the case when the loss increases more than the generation, a decrease in precipitation will take place. If the increase in the condensate generation dominates, an increase in precipitation will take place. A classification scheme of aerosol effects on precipitation is proposed and its relation to the observational and numerical results available is analysed. Possible reasons for the uncertainties and discrepancies of the numerical results, as well as between measurements, are analysed. A discussion of unsolved problems is presented in the conclusion.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7ac0e959f698340747dc426809f026cfa19281a7

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Citations in the corpus

Modeling Aerosol Impacts on Convective Storms in Different Environments (2009, background): “Several studies (Phillips et al. 2002; van den Heever et al. 2006; van den Heever and Cotton 2007; Lynn et al. 2007; Khain 2009) have found that high aerosol concentrations may affect mixed-phase clouds differently than warm clouds.”
Aerosol Effects on Intensity of Landfalling Hurricanes as Seen from Simulations with the WRF Model with Spectral Bin Microphysics (2010, background): “In particular, it was found that small aerosols invigorate tropical convection, increasing vertical velocities and cloud top heights of deep convective clouds (Khain et al. 2004, 2005, 2008b; Koren et al. 2005; Lynn et al. 2005a,b; Wang 2005; Lee et al. 2008; Khain 2009).”
Review of Aerosol–Cloud Interactions: Mechanisms, Significance, and Challenges (2016, background): “…factors impacting the significance of aerosol impacts on convective intensity, precipitation, and cloud radiative forcing (e.g., Khain et al. 2008b; Khain 2009; Fan et al. 2009, 2012b; Tao et al. 2012; Storer et al. 2010; Storer and van den Heever 2013), because those factors regulate the dominant…”
Aerosol Effects on Microstructure and Intensity of Tropical Cyclones (2012, methodology): “Budget considerations indicate that most of the latent heat release is caused by droplet condensation, and then by freezing resulting from riming within a deep supercooled cloud layer (Khain 2009).”
Online coupled regional meteorology chemistry models in Europe: current status and prospects (2013, background): “For example, current NWP does not include detailed chemical processes, but there is some evidence that aerosols have strong effects on radiative and precipitation processes (Khain, 2009).”
Representation of microphysical processes in cloud‐resolving models: Spectral (bin) microphysics versus bulk parameterization (2015, methodology): “…precipitation, and other atmospheric features at a wide range of scales, from that of single cloud to global scales [Khain et al., 2005; van den Heever et al., 2006; Levin and Cotton 2007; Rosenfeld et al., 2008; Khain, 2009; van den Heever et al., 2011; Tao et al., 2007, 2012; Fan et al., 2013].”
Cloud condensation nuclei production associated with atmospheric nucleation: a synthesis based on existing literature and new results (2012, background): “…cloud microphysical properties (e.g. Mccomiskey et al., 2009; Shao and Liu, 2009), cloud cover and lifetime (e.g. Kaufman and Koren, 2006; Small et al., 2009), and the probability of clouds precipitating (Rosenfeld et al., 2008; Khain, 2009; Sorooshian et al., 2009; Stevens and Feingold, 2009).”
Observational evidence of aerosol enhancement of lightning activity and convective invigoration (2011, background): “[13] However, sensitivity of convective cloud properties to aerosol concentration is a non‐linear function of background aerosol loading [Wang, 2005; Fan et al., 2009; Khain, 2009 ].”
Cloud‐resolving model intercomparison of an MC3E squall line case: Part I—Convective updrafts (2017, background): “Many studies have also shown squall-line convective intensity and precipitation structure to be sensitive to parameterization of cloud microphysics [e.g., Khain, 2009; Li et al., 2009a, 2009b, Morrison et al., 2009; Morrison and Milbrandt, 2015; Baldauf et al., 2011].”