Abstract
For East Asia, circulation responses to anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing dominate aerosol-precipitation interactions. To gain insights, this study analyzed CESM simulated circulation changes related to the ‘north drought and south flood’ pattern caused by aerosol increases between two cases. One case was driven by the year-1850 global emission inventory, whereas the other used identical emissions for all regions except East Asia where anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and precursors of the year-2000 were imposed. Results show that the cooling caused by increased aerosols, which peaks at the middle latitudes, induces two intervened anomalous circulations in the troposphere. Near the surface, the increased land pressure weakens the southerlies and reduces the moisture transport for the entire eastern China. Meanwhile, in the free troposphere, the anomalous circulation exhibits remarkable meridional variations. While convergence occurs over 25°–45°N which partially compensates the decrease of moisture transport from lower levels, divergence develops over regions to the north which enhances the moisture deficiency. In addition, the southward shift of the jet stream stimulates anomalous rising and sinking motions over the south and north of 32°N. The combination of these changes leads to precipitation increase in the Yangtze River Valley but decrease over North China.
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Acknowledgements
This study acknowledges the supports by the US National Science Foundation (1545917) in support of the Partnership for International Research and Education project at the University at Albany; and the Office of Sciences (BER), Department of Energy (DE-FG02-92ER61369). JPC’s effort was supported by the grant from Ministry of Science and Technology (105-2119-M-002-028-MY3) to National Taiwan University while the simulations were conducted at the National Center for High-Performance Computing. Simulation data used in this study will be available upon request to Dr. Jen-Ping Chen (jpchen@as.ntu.edu.tw).
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This paper is a contribution to the special issue on East Asian Climate under Global Warming: Understanding and Projection, consisting of papers from the East Asian Climate (EAC) community and the 13th EAC International Workshop in Beijing, China on 24-25 March 2016, and coordinated by Jianping Li, Huang-Hsiung Hsu, Wei-Chyung Wang, Kyung-Ja Ha, Tim Li, and Akio Kitoh.
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Chen, G., Wang, WC. & Chen, JP. Circulation responses to regional aerosol climate forcing in summer over East Asia. Clim Dyn 51, 3973–3984 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4267-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4267-3