Simulation study on the indirect effect of sulfate on the summer climate over the eastern China monsoon region

Abstract

Abstract In this study, we designed a sensitivity test using the half number concentration of sulfate in the nucleation calculation process to study the aerosol-cloud interaction (ACI) of sulfate on clouds, precipitation, and monsoon intensity in the summer over the eastern China monsoon region (ECMR) with the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model version 5. Numerical experiments show that the ACI of sulfate led to an approximately 30% and 34% increase in the cloud condensation nuclei and cloud droplet number concentrations, respectively. Cloud droplet effective radius below 850 hPa decreased by approximately 4% in the southern ECMR, while the total liquid water path increased by 11%. The change in the indirect radiative forcing due to sulfate at the top of the atmosphere in the ECMR during summer was − 3.74 W·m−2. The decreased radiative forcing caused a surface cooling of 0.32 K and atmospheric cooling of approximately 0.3 K, as well as a 0.17 hPa increase in sea level pressure. These changes decreased the thermal difference between the land and sea and the gradient of the sea-land pressure, leading to a weakening in the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and a decrease in the total precipitation rate in the southern ECMR. The cloud lifetime effect has a relatively weaker contribution to summer precipitation, which is dominated by convection. The results show that the ACI of sulfate was one possible reason for the weakening of the EASM in the late 1970s.