Process Modeling of Aerosol-cloud Interaction in Summertime
Precipitating Shallow Cumulus over the Western North Atlantic
Abstract
Process modeling of aerosol-cloud interaction is essential to bridging
gaps between observational analysis and climate modeling of aerosol
effects in the Earth system and eventually reducing climate projection
uncertainties. In this study, we examine aerosol-cloud interaction in
summertime precipitating shallow cumuli observed during the Aerosol
Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment
(ACTIVATE). Aerosols and precipitating shallow cumuli were extensively
observed with in-situ and remote-sensing instruments during two research
flight cases on 02 June and 07 June, respectively, during the ACTIVATE
summer 2021 deployment phase. We perform observational analysis and
large-eddy simulation (LES) of aerosol effect on precipitating cumulus
in these two cases. Given the measured aerosol size distributions and
meteorological conditions, LES is able to reproduce the observed cloud
properties by aircraft such as liquid water content (LWC), cloud droplet
number concentration (Nc) and effective radius reff. However, it
produces smaller liquid water path (LWP) and larger Nc compared to the
satellite retrievals. Both 02 and 07 June cases are over warm waters of
the Gulf Stream and have a cloud top height over 3 km, but the 07 June
case is more polluted and has larger LWC. We find that the
aerosol-induced LWP adjustment is dominated by precipitation and is
anticorrelated with cloud-top entrainment for both cases. A negative
cloud fraction adjustment due to an increase of aerosol number
concentration is also shown in the simulations.