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The role of precipitation in aerosol-induced changes in northern hemisphere wintertime stationary waves

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Abstract

The coupled climate model EC-Earth2 is used to investigate the impact of direct radiative effects of aerosols on stationary waves in the northern hemisphere wintertime circulation. The direct effect of aerosols is simulated by introducing prescribed mixing ratios of different aerosol compounds representing pre-industrial and present-day conditions, no indirect effects are included. In the EC-Earth2 results, the surface temperature response is uncorrelated with the highly asymmetric aerosol radiative forcing pattern. Instead, the anomalous extratropical temperature field bears a strong resemblance to the aerosol-induced changes in the stationary-wave pattern. It is demonstrated that the main features of the wave pattern of EC-Earth2 can be replicated by a linear, baroclinic model forced with latent heat changes corresponding to the anomalous convective precipitation generated by EC-Earth2. The tropical latent heat release is an effective means of generating stationary wave trains that propagate into the extratropics. Hence, the results of the present study indicate that aerosol-induced convective precipitation anomalies govern the extratropical wave-field changes, and that the far-field temperature response dominates over local effects of aerosol radiative forcing.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Mistra Swedish Research Programme for Climate Impacts and Adaptation (Mistra-SWECIA) and the Bert Bolin Centre for Climate Research. We thank Erland Källén for discussions and contributions during the initiation of the project and Marcus Löfverström for providing the linearised model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anna Lewinschal & Annica M. L. Ekman

  2. Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden

    Heiner Körnich

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  1. Anna Lewinschal
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  2. Annica M. L. Ekman
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  3. Heiner Körnich
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Correspondence to Anna Lewinschal.

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Lewinschal, A., Ekman, A.M.L. & Körnich, H. The role of precipitation in aerosol-induced changes in northern hemisphere wintertime stationary waves. Clim Dyn 41, 647–661 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1622-7

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