Abstract

Aerosol effects on organized precipitation systems (PSs) over Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region are investigated using 6 years of Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) observations. An auto-clustering algorithm was used to identify local-scale PSs under different aerosol loading conditions and to quantify their three-dimensional structure properties. The general characteristics of PSs show a non-monotonic trend with increasing aerosol optical depth (AOD). The near surface rain rate, the maximum radar reflectivity, the horizontal precipitation area and the vertical extension of PSs decrease with increasing AOD when aerosol loading is low. However, for higher aerosol loadings, the precipitation area first increases and then decreases with increasing AOD. By constraining the variations of meteorology conditions and by calculating the partial correlations, aerosol effects rather than meteorology effects are most likely the major causes for the observed changes of PSs. One possible explanation is that the changes of proportions of different aerosol types with increasing AOD have different mechanisms for affecting the macro-physical and micro-physical properties of PSs. The findings provide a valuable insight into how aerosols affect the three-dimensional structure of local-scale PSs over a region with complex aerosol composition.

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