Effects of intermittent aerosol forcing on the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition

Abstract

We explore the role of intermittent aerosol forcing (e.g., injections associated with marine cloud brightening) in the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition (SCT). We simulate a 3 d Lagrangian trajectory in the northeast Pacific using a large-eddy simulation model coupled to a bin-emulating, two-moment, bulk microphysics scheme that captures the evolution of aerosol and cloud droplet concentrations. By varying the background aerosol concentration, we consider two baseline systems – pristine and polluted. We perturb the baseline cases with a range of aerosol injection strategies by varying the injection rate, number of injectors, and the timing of the aerosol injection. Our results show that aerosol dispersal is more efficient under pristine conditions due to a transverse circulation created by the gradients in precipitation rates across the plume track. Furthermore, we see that a substantial enhancement in the cloud radiative effect (CRE) is evident in both systems. In the polluted system, the albedo effect (smaller but more numerous droplets causing brighter clouds at constant liquid water) is the dominant contributor in the initial 2 d. The contributions from liquid water path (LWP) and cloud fraction adjustments are important on the third and fourth day, respectively. In the pristine system, cloud fraction adjustments are the dominant contributor to the CRE on all 3 d, followed by the albedo effect. In both these systems, we see that the SCT is delayed due to the injection of aerosol, and the extent of the delay is proportional to the number of particles injected into the marine boundary layer.