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3D direct impacts of urban aerosols on dynamics during the CAPITOUL field experiment
Author(s) -
Aouizerats B.,
Tulet P.,
Gomes L.
Publication year - 2012
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 - 10.1029/2012gl053781
Subject(s) - aerosol , atmospheric sciences , radiative transfer , environmental science , radiative forcing , boundary layer , shortwave , forcing (mathematics) , radiative cooling , flux (metallurgy) , population , planetary boundary layer , meteorology , physics , materials science , mechanics , demography , quantum mechanics , sociology , metallurgy
Evaluating the radiative impacts of aerosol particles is of great interest for understanding atmospheric physics and processes feedbacks. To respond to such objectives, the online fully coupled model Meso‐NH is applied to a real case during a two‐day Intensive Observation Period (IOP) of the CAPITOUL campaign. The aerosol optical properties are computed from the chemical composition and the size distribution of the particle population, and are compared to observations and analysed at local and regional scales. The differences between two simulations are then studied in order to isolate the direct radiative impacts of aerosols on dynamics. Results show that the aerosol particles generate a forcing on shortwave flux by a decrease of the amount reaching the surface up to 30 Wm −2 . The resulting feedbacks lead to a cooling up to 0.6 K on the 2‐meter temperature over the city of Toulouse and over the larger 125 km by 125 km area around Toulouse. This cooling is also modeled along the whole boundary layer, leading to a decrease of the boundary layer height up to −50 m during the afternoon and a decrease of the vertical velocities with an average of −3 %.