Global modeling studies of composition and decadal trends of the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer

Abstract

The Asian summer monsoon (ASM) traps convectively lifted boundary layer pollutants inside its upper-tropospheric lower-stratospheric Asian monsoon anticyclone (AMA). It is associated with a seasonal and spatially confined enhanced aerosol layer, called the Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer (ATAL). Due to the dynamical variability of the AMA, the dearth of in situ observations in this region, the complexity of the emission sources and of transport pathways, knowledge of the ATAL properties in terms of aerosol budget, chemical composition, as well as its variability and temporal trend is still largely uncertain. In this work, we use the Community Earth System Model (CESM 1.2 version) based on the coupling of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5) and the MAM7 (Modal Aerosol Model) aerosol module to simulate the composition of the ATAL and its decadal trends. Our simulations cover a long-term period of 16 years from 2000 to 2015. We identify a typical “double-peak” vertical profile of aerosols for the ATAL. We attribute the upper peak (around 100 hPa, predominant during early ATAL, e.g., in June) to dry aerosols, possibly from nucleation processes, and the lower peak (around 250 hPa, predominant for a well-developed and late ATAL, e.g., in July and August) to cloud-borne aerosols associated with convective clouds. We find that mineral dust (present in both peaks) is the dominant aerosol by mass in the ATAL, showing a large interannual variability but no long-term trend, due to its natural variability. The results between 120 and 80 hPa (dry aerosol peak) suggest that for aerosols other than dust the ATAL is composed of around 40 % of sulfate, 30 % of secondary and 15 % of primary organic aerosols, 14 % of ammonium aerosols and less than 3 % of black carbon. Nitrate aerosols are not considered in MAM7. The analysis of the anthropogenic and biomass burning aerosols shows a positive trend for all aerosols simulated by CESM-MAM7.