Atmospheric responses to the redistribution of anthropogenic aerosols

The geographical shift of global anthropogenic aerosols from the developed countries to the Asian continent since the 1980s could potentially perturb the regional and global climate due to aerosol‐cloud‐radiation interactions. We use an atmospheric general circulation model with different aerosol sc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of geophysical research. Atmospheres Vol. 120; no. 18; pp. 9625 - 9641
Main Authors: Wang, Yuan, Jiang, Jonathan H., Su, Hui
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Washington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 27.09.2015
Subjects:
Aerosol effects
aerosol-cloud interaction
Aerosols
Airborne particulates
anthropogenic aerosols
Anthropogenic factors
Atmospheric circulation
Atmospherics
Circulation
Developed countries
Extinction
general circulation model
General circulation models
Geophysics
Global aerosols
Global climate
Interactions
Jet stream
Jet streams (meteorology)
Pollution abatement
Pollution control
Precipitation
Radiation
Radiation budget
radiative forcing
Reflectance
Regional
Regions
Shape effects
Stream pollution
Surface temperature
Temperature changes
Temperature effects
Temperature gradients
Temperature trends
Tropical circulation
Tropical climate
Tropical environments
Tropics
Winds
Zonal winds
United States > US
Europe
Asia
ANE, Europe
ISSN:2169-897X, 2169-8996
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The geographical shift of global anthropogenic aerosols from the developed countries to the Asian continent since the 1980s could potentially perturb the regional and global climate due to aerosol‐cloud‐radiation interactions. We use an atmospheric general circulation model with different aerosol scenarios to investigate the radiative and microphysical effects of anthropogenic aerosols from different regions on the radiation budget, precipitation, and large‐scale circulations. An experiment contrasting anthropogenic aerosol scenarios in 1970 and 2010 shows that the altered cloud reflectivity and solar extinction by aerosols results in regional surface temperature cooling in East and South Asia, and warming in the US and Europe, respectively. These aerosol‐induced temperature changes are consistent with the relative temperature trends from 1980 to 2010 over different regions in the reanalysis data. A reduced meridional streamfunction and zonal winds over the tropics as well as a poleward shift of the jet stream suggest weakened and expanded tropical circulations, which are induced by the redistributed aerosols through a relaxing of the meridional temperature gradient. Consequently, precipitation is suppressed in the deep tropics and enhanced in the subtropics. Our assessments of the aerosol effects over the different regions suggest that the increasing Asian pollution accounts for the weakening of the tropics circulation, while the decreasing pollution in Europe and US tends to shift the circulation systems southward. Moreover, the aerosol indirect forcing is predominant over the total aerosol forcing in magnitude, while aerosol radiative and microphysical effects jointly shape the meridional energy distributions and modulate the circulation systems. Key Points The emission shift contributes to the “dimming” in Asia and “brightening” in the US and Europe Atmospheric meridional circulations are weakened by the redistributed aerosols Aerosol effects from different regions contribute distinctively to the circulation modification
Bibliography:NASA ROSES14-ACMAP
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ArticleID:JGRD52452
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SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:2169-897X
2169-8996
DOI:10.1002/2015JD023665