Circulation patterns linked to the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) affect precipitation, surface temperature, and air quality extremes over East Asia. These circulation patterns can in turn be influenced by aerosol radiative and microphysical effects through diabatic heating and its impacts on atmospheric vorticity. Using global model simulations, we investigate the effects of anthropogenic aerosol emissions and concentration changes on the intensity and variability of the EAWM. Comparison with reanalysis products indicates that the model captures the mean state of the EAWM well. The experiments indicate that anthropogenic aerosol emissions strengthen the Siberian High but weaken the East Asian jet stream, making the land areas of East Asia colder, drier, and snowier. Aerosols reduce mean surface air temperatures by approximately 1.5°C, comparable to about half of the difference between strong and weak EAWM episodes in the control simulation. The mechanisms behind these changes are evaluated by analyzing differences in the potential vorticity budget. Anthropogenic aerosol effects on diabatic heating strengthen anomalous subsidence over southern East Asia, establishing an anticyclonic circulation anomaly that suppresses deep convection and precipitation. Aerosol effects on cloud cover and cloud longwave radiative heating weaken stability over the eastern flank of the Tibetan Plateau, intensifying upslope flow along the western side of the anticyclone. Both circulation anomalies contribute to reducing surface air temperatures through regional impacts on thermal advection and the atmospheric radiative balance.

The Asian Tropopause Aerosol Layer (ATAL) has emerged in recent decades to play a prominent role in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere above the Asian monsoon. Although ATAL effects on surface and top-of-atmosphere radiation budgets are well established, the magnitude and variability of ATAL effects on radiative transfer within the tropopause layer remain poorly constrained. Here, we investigate the impacts of various aerosol types and layer structures on clear-sky shortwave radiative heating in the Asian monsoon tropopause layer using reanalysis products and offline radiative transfer simulations. ATAL effects on shortwave radiative heating based on the MERRA-2 aerosol reanalysis are on the order of 10% of mean clear-sky radiative heating within the tropopause layer, although discrepancies among recent reanalysis and forecast products suggest that this ratio could be as small as ~5% or as large as ~25%. Uncertainties in surface and top-of-atmosphere flux effects are also large, with values spanning one order of magnitude at the top-of-atmosphere. ATAL effects on radiative heating peak between 150 hPa and 80 hPa (360 K–400 K potential temperature) along the southern flank of the anticyclone. Clear-sky and all-sky shortwave heating are at local minima in this vertical range, which is situated between the positive influences of monsoon-enhanced water vapor and the negative influence of the ‘ozone valley’ in the monsoon lower stratosphere. ATAL effects also extend further toward the west, where diabatic vertical velocities remain upward despite descent in pressure coordinates.