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Radiative effects of black carbon aerosols on Indian monsoon: a study using WRF-Chem model

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Abstract

The Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) is utilized to examine the radiative effects of black carbon (BC) aerosols on the Indian monsoon, for the year 2010. Five ensemble simulations with different initial conditions (1st to 5th December, 2009) were performed and simulation results between 1st January, 2010 to 31st December, 2010 were used for analysis. Most of the BC which stays near the surface during the pre-monsoon season gets transported to higher altitudes with the northward migration of the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) during the monsoon season. In both the seasons, strong negative SW anomalies are present at the surface along with positive anomalies in the atmosphere, which results in the surface cooling and lower tropospheric heating, respectively. During the pre-monsoon season, lower troposphere heating causes increased convection and enhanced meridional wind circulation, bringing moist air from Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal to the North-East India, leading to increased rainfall there. However, during the monsoon season, along with cooling over the land regions, a warming over the Bay of Bengal is simulated. This differential heating results in an increased westerly moisture flux anomaly over central India, leading to increased rainfall over northern parts of India but decreased rainfall over southern parts. Decreased rainfall over southern India is also substantiated by the presence of increased evaporation over Bay of Bengal and decrease over land regions.

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Acknowledgments

The MODIS and TRMM data used in this study were produced with the Giovanni online data system, developed and maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) GES DISC. We acknowledge the MODIS and TRMM teams for the data used. We thank the PIs for their efforts in establishing and maintaining the AERONET sites at Kanpur, Jaipur, Nainital, and Gandhi College. The NCEP FNL reanalysis data were downloaded from http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.2/ and the ERA-Interim data were downloaded from the UCAR website http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds627.0. We also acknowledge Mr. Shamjad, PhD student at IIT Kanpur for providing useful BC concentration data. We thank the anonymous reviewer for critically reading the manuscript and suggesting substantial improvements. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for HPC server by the Earth System Science Organization, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India (MOES/16/05/11-RDEAS) and funding support by Indo-UK Monsoon project, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India (MoES/NERC/16/021I0 PC-) and Climate Change Program, Department of Science and Technology to conduct this research work.

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  1. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, 208016, India

    Pramod Soni, Sachchida Nand Tripathi & Rajesh Srivastava

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  1. Pramod Soni
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  2. Sachchida Nand Tripathi
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Soni, P., Tripathi, S.N. & Srivastava, R. Radiative effects of black carbon aerosols on Indian monsoon: a study using WRF-Chem model. Theor Appl Climatol 132, 115–134 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-017-2057-1

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