Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-13-2018

Department

Atmospheric Sciences; Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Abstract

Wet deposition driven by precipitation is an important sink for atmospheric aerosols and soluble gases. We investigate the sensitivity of atmospheric aerosol lifetimes to precipitation intensity and frequency in the context of global climate change. Our sensitivity model simulations, through some simplified perturbations to precipitation in the GEOS-Chem model, show that the removal efficiency and hence the atmospheric lifetime of aerosols have significantly higher sensitivities to precipitation frequencies than to precipitation intensities, indicating that the same amount of precipitation may lead to different removal efficiencies of atmospheric aerosols. Combining the long-term trends of precipitation patterns for various regions with the sensitivities of atmospheric aerosol lifetimes to various precipitation characteristics allows us to examine the potential impacts of precipitation changes on atmospheric aerosols. Analyses based on an observational dataset show that precipitation frequencies in some regions have decreased in the past 14 years, which might increase the atmospheric aerosol lifetimes in those regions. Similar analyses based on multiple reanalysis meteorological datasets indicate that the changes of precipitation intensity and frequency over the past 30 years can lead to perturbations in the atmospheric aerosol lifetimes by 10% or higher at the regional scale.

Publisher's Statement

© Author(s) 2018. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8173-2018

Publication Title

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Version

Publisher's PDF

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