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Multi-year analysis of aerosol optical properties and implications to radiative forcing over urban Pretoria, South Africa

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Abstract

The present study focused on investigating the aerosol optical properties and direct aerosol radiative forcing (DARF) using the AERONET Sunphotometer measurements conducted during 2011–2017 over an urban-industrial city, Pretoria (25.75° S, 28.28° E) located in the Northwest of South Africa (SA). Results revealed high aerosol optical depth (AOD440) and Ångström exponent (AE440–870) during SON (0.28 ± 0.09, 1.46 ± 0.16) and DJF (0.24 ± 0.07, 1.48 ± 0.18) indicating the dominance of anthropogenic fine-mode aerosols from biomass burning. The single scattering albedo (SSA440) reached a maximum of 0.90 ± 0.05 in DJF and minimum (0.85 ± 0.04) during JJA. The source analysis from the concentration-weighted trajectory (CWT) model exhibited large heterogeneity in all seasons. However, the region is influenced by distinct aerosol types with the abundance of anthropogenic fine absorbing aerosols (86%) and the invisible ratio of dust particles. In addition, the aerosol volume size distribution (VSD) increased with an increasing AOD, exhibiting a bimodal lognormal structure, with a more pronounced peak in fine- relative to coarse-mode particles. Further, the inversion products showed a strong spectral dependence in SSA with substantial heterogeneity in all seasons. At last, the Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SBDART) model showed that the DARF within the atmosphere was more pronounced during SON (46.71 W m−2) and JJA (46.39 W m−2) due to significant differences in AOD and SSA, with an annual mean value of 33.16 W m−2, and the corresponding atmospheric heating rate of 0.96 K day−1. The study provides information on the existing aerosol distribution and their potential impact on climatic change over an urban city in the Northwest of SA and could form a basis for policymaking over the region.

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Acknowledgments

We owe our sincere thanks to the Principal Investigator, Prof. Brent Holben, and his staff for establishing and maintaining the AERONET station, as well as other data sources used in this study. Thanks are due for procuring the NCEP/NCAR data at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data and meteorological variables from the Weather Underground website (www.wunderground.com). The authors would like to acknowledge Prof. Hartmut Graßl, Editor-in-Chief of Theoretical and Applied Climatology Journal, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions towards the improvement of an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41805121, 41775123, 91644224) and the National Research Foundation (NRF-South Africa) bi-lateral research grant (UID: 78682). The authors (KRK and NLD) thanks the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India for the award of DST-FIST Level-1 (SR/FST/PS-1/2018/35) scheme to the Department of Physics, KLEF, India.

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Author notes

  1. Kanike Raghavendra Kumar and Richard Boiyo contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation (KLEF), Vaddeswaram, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, 522502, India

    Kanike Raghavendra Kumar & Nulu Latha Devi

  2. Collaborative Innovation Centre on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters, Ministry of Education (KLME), Joint International Laboratory on Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC), Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation of China Meteorological Administration, School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, Jiangsu, China

    Kanike Raghavendra Kumar, Rehana Khan, Na Kang & Xingna Yu

  3. Department of Physical Sciences, Meru University of Science and Technology, Meru, Kenya

    Richard Boiyo

  4. Department of Environment, Energy and Resources, County Government of Vihiga, Maragoli, Kenya

    Richard Boiyo

  5. Department of Physics, Higher Education, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar, 25000, Pakistan

    Rehana Khan

  6. Discipline of Physics, School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, KwaZulu Natal, 4000, South Africa

    Venkataraman Sivakumar

  7. Optronic Sensor Systems, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)–DPSS, Pretoria, Gauteng, 0001, South Africa

    Derek Griffith

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  1. Kanike Raghavendra Kumar
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Correspondence to Kanike Raghavendra Kumar.

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Kumar, K.R., Boiyo, R., Khan, R. et al. Multi-year analysis of aerosol optical properties and implications to radiative forcing over urban Pretoria, South Africa. Theor Appl Climatol 141, 343–357 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03183-7

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