Open AccessAerosol invigoration effect in Guilin (China)
Author(s) -
Li Xiong,
Pan Ying,
Mo Zhaoyu,
Liu Risheng
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
atmospheric science letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.951
H-Index - 45
ISSN - 1530-261X
DOI - 10.1002/asl.1077
Subject(s) - lightning (connector) , atmospheric sciences , aerosol , environmental science , meteorology , wind shear , convection , dew point , precipitation , convective available potential energy , yield (engineering) , cloud base , wind speed , physics , power (physics) , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics , cloud computing , computer science , operating system
The data of lightning flash count, rainfall, radar reflectivity, vertical wind shear (WS), surface dew point temperature (DP) and particulate matter up to 10 μm in size (PM 10 ) over Guilin, China from July 2010 to December 2019 were studied to check whether aerosol invigoration effect (AIV) exists in the study area. It was found that convective rainfall fluctuates less when compared with lightning in convective system. A hypothesis was put forward that the difference in fluctuations between convective rainfall and lightning is attributed to AIV. To test this hypothesis, lightning yield, which is defined as the ratio between lightning and rainfall, was analyzed. It was found that lightning yield has a positive correlation with PM 10 when WS is low and DP is high for convective precipitation. It was also found that for the weak WS cases, when aerosol conditions are shifted from super pristine to the optimal concentration ( N op ), lightning yield increases with increasing PM 10 ; whereas for concentrations greater than N op , lightning yield decreases with increasing PM 10 . N op would be larger for higher DP. The results are in line with the previous studies showing that AIV depends strongly on weak wind shear and/or warm cloud base. This suggests that AIV exists in the study area, and suggests that the hypothesis is reasonable, and lightning yield can be used as a surrogate to study AIV.