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Anthropogenic aerosols and the distribution of past large‐scale precipitation change
Author(s) -
Wang Chien
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl066416
Subject(s) - coupled model intercomparison project , precipitation , climatology , environmental science , aerosol , extratropical cyclone , climate change , atmospheric sciences , tropics , anomaly (physics) , climate model , northern hemisphere , meteorology , geology , geography , oceanography , condensed matter physics , fishery , biology , physics
The climate response of precipitation to the effects of anthropogenic aerosols is a critical while not yet fully understood aspect in climate science. Results of selected models that participated the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 and the data from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project suggest that, throughout the tropics and also in the extratropical Northern Hemisphere, aerosols have largely dominated the distribution of precipitation changes in reference to the preindustrial era in the second half of the last century. Aerosol‐induced cooling has offset some of the warming caused by the greenhouse gases from the tropics to the Arctic and thus formed the gradients of surface temperature anomaly that enable the revealed precipitation change patterns to occur. Improved representation of aerosol‐cloud interaction has been demonstrated as the key factor for models to reproduce consistent distributions of past precipitation change with the reanalysis data.