dc.contributor.author | Gryspeerdt, E | |
dc.contributor.author | Stier, P | |
dc.contributor.author | Partridge, DG | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-03-06T15:37:51Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2014-09-16 | |
dc.description.abstract | Many theories have been proposed detailing how aerosols might impact precipitation, predicting both increases and decreases depending on the prevailing meteorological conditions and aerosol type. In convective clouds, increased aerosol concentrations have been speculated to invigorate convective activity. Previous studies have shown large increases in precipitation with increasing aerosol optical depth, concluding an aerosol effect on precipitation. Our analysis reveals that these studies may have been influenced by cloud effects on the retrieved aerosol, as well as by meteorological covariations.
We use a regime-based approach to separate out different cloud regimes, allowing for the study of aerosol–cloud interactions in individual cloud regimes. We account for the influence of cloud properties on the aerosol retrieval and make use of the diurnal sampling of the TRMM satellite and the TRMM merged precipitation product to investigate the precipitation development.
We find that whilst there is little effect on precipitation at the time of the aerosol retrieval, in the 6 h after the aerosol retrieval, there is an increase in precipitation from cloud in high-aerosol environments, consistent with the invigoration hypothesis. Increases in lightning flash count with increased aerosol are also observed in this period. The invigoration effect appears to be dependent on the cloud-top temperature, with clouds with tops colder than 0 °C showing increases in precipitation at times after the retrieval, as well as increases in wet scavenging. Warm clouds show little change in precipitation development with increasing aerosol, suggesting ice processes are important for the invigoration of precipitation. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | This work was supported by a UK Natural Environment Research
Council (NERC) DPhil studentship and funding from the European
Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement
no. FP7-280025. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 14, pp. 9677 - 9694 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.5194/acp-14-9677-2014 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/31886 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | European Geosciences Union (EGU) / Copernicus Publications | en_GB |
dc.relation.source | The MODIS data are from the NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center and the ISCCP data are from the NASA
Langley Atmospheric Research Center. The TRMM data were
acquired as part of the activities of NASA’s Science Mission
Directorate, and are archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth
Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). The
LIS data were obtained using the NASA Reverb/ECHO system.
The MIDAS data were obtained from the British Atmospheric
Data Centre (BADC). | en_GB |
dc.rights | © Author(s) 2014. Open access. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ | en_GB |
dc.title | Links between satellite-retrieved aerosol and precipitation | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2018-03-06T15:37:51Z | |
dc.description | This is the final version of the article. Available from EGU via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics | en_GB |