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| Titel |
Wet scavenging limits the detection of aerosol effects on precipitation |
| VerfasserIn |
E. Gryspeerdt, P. Stier, B. A. White, Z. Kipling |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1680-7316
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ; 15, no. 13 ; Nr. 15, no. 13 (2015-07-13), S.7557-7570 |
| Datensatznummer |
250119888
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/acp-15-7557-2015.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
Satellite studies of aerosol–cloud interactions usually make use of
retrievals of both aerosol and cloud properties, but these retrievals are
rarely spatially co-located. While it is possible to retrieve aerosol
properties above clouds under certain circumstances, aerosol properties are
usually only retrieved in cloud-free scenes. Generally, the smaller spatial
variability of aerosols compared to clouds reduces the importance of this
sampling difference. However, as precipitation generates an increase in
spatial variability of aerosols, the imperfect co-location of aerosol and
cloud property retrievals may lead to changes in observed
aerosol–cloud–precipitation relationships in precipitating environments.
In this work, we use a regional-scale model, satellite observations and
reanalysis data to investigate how the non-coincidence of aerosol, cloud and
precipitation retrievals affects correlations between them. We show that the
difference in the aerosol optical depth (AOD)–precipitation relationship
between general circulation models (GCMs) and satellite observations can be
explained by the wet scavenging of aerosol. Using observations of the
development of precipitation from cloud regimes, we show how the influence of
wet scavenging can obscure possible aerosol influences on precipitation from
convective clouds. This obscuring of aerosol–cloud–precipitation interactions
by wet scavenging suggests that even if GCMs contained a perfect
representation of aerosol influences on convective clouds, the difficulty of
separating the "clear-sky" aerosol from the "all-sky" aerosol in GCMs may
prevent them from reproducing the correlations seen in satellite data. |
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