NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Cloud-nucleating aerosols emitted from mainland China have the potential to influence cloud and precipitation systems that propagate through the region of the East China Sea. Both simulations from the Spectral Radiation-Transport Model for Aerosol Species (SPRINTARS) and observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reveal plumes of pollution that are transported into the East China Sea via frontal passage or other offshore flow. Under such conditions, satellite-derived precipitation estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) frequently produce discrepancies in rainfall estimates that are hypothesized to be a result of aerosol modification of cloud and raindrop size distributions. Cloud-resolving model simulations were used to explore the impact of aerosol loading on three identified frontal-passage events in which the TMI and PR precipitation estimates displayed large discrepancies. Each of these events was characterized by convective and stratiform elements in association with a frontal passage. Area-averaged time series for each event reveal similar monotonic cloud and rain microphysical responses to aerosol loading. The ratio in the vertical distribution of cloud water to rainwater increased. Cloud droplet concentration increased and the mean diameters decreased, thereby reducing droplet autoconversion and collision–coalescence growth. As a result, raindrop concentration decreased, while the drop mean diameter increased; furthermore, average rainwater path magnitude and area fraction both decreased. The average precipitation rate fields reveal a complex modification of the timing and spatial coverage of rainfall. This suggests that the warm-rain microphysical response to aerosols, in addition to the precipitation life cycle, microphysical feedbacks, and evaporative effects, play an important role in determining surface rainfall.