PNNL

Abstract

The aerosol optical depth (AOD) has been shown to correlate with precipitation rate (R) in recent studies. The relationships between R and AOD are examined in this study using 150-year simulations in preindustrial conditions with the CESM model. Through partial correlation analysis, with the impact from 10-m wind speed removed, relationships between modeled AOD and R exert a significant change from positive to negative over the mid-latitude oceans, indicating that the wind speed has the largest contribution to the relationships over the mid-latitude oceans. Sensitivity simulation shows that variations in wind speed lead to increasing R by +0.99 mm day-1 averaged globally, offsetting 64% of the wet scavenging induced decrease in precipitation between polluted and clean conditions. These demonstrate that wind speed is one of the major drivers of R-AOD relationships. Relative humidity can also result in the positive relationships; however, its role is smaller than that of wind speed.