Atmospheric responses to the redistribution of anthropogenic aerosols

Abstract

The geographical shift of global anthropogenic aerosols from the developed countries to the Asian continent since the 1980s could potentially perturb the regional and global climate due to aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. We use an atmospheric general circulation model with different aerosol scenarios to investigate the radiative and microphysical effects of anthropogenic aerosols from different regions on the radiation budget, precipitation, and large-scale circulations. An experiment contrasting anthropogenic aerosol scenarios in 1970 and 2010 shows that the altered cloud reflectivity and solar extinction by aerosols results in regional surface temperature cooling in East and South Asia, and warming in the US and Europe, respectively. These aerosol-induced temperature changes are consistent with the relative temperature trends from 1980 to 2010 over different regions in the reanalysis data. A reduced meridional streamfunction and zonal winds over the tropics as well as a poleward shift of the jet stream suggest weakened and expanded tropical circulations, which are induced by the redistributed aerosols through a relaxing of the meridional temperature gradient. Consequently, precipitation is suppressed in the deep tropics and enhanced in the subtropics. Our assessments of the aerosol effects over the different regions suggest that the increasing Asian pollution accounts for the weakening of the tropics circulation, while the decreasing pollution in Europe and US tends to shift the circulation systems southward. Moreover, the aerosol indirect forcing is predominant over the total aerosol forcing in magnitude, while aerosol radiative and microphysical effects jointly shape the meridional energy distributions and modulate the circulation systems.

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