Quantification of the Impacts of Asian Pollution on Pacific Storm Track (Invited)

Atmospheric aerosols indirectly impact climate by altering cloud development, lifetime, precipitation, and albedo. Current understanding of the aerosol indirect effect remains highly uncertain, constituting the greatest uncertainty in climate prediction. Anthropogenic aerosols may influence the cloud processes and precipitation by serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), potentially forming smaller cloud droplets and higher concentrations. Increasing pollution levels in Asia and associated outflows have raised considerable concerns because of their potential impact on regional and global climate. Our recent results suggest that the wintertime Pacific may be highly vulnerable to the aerosol-cloud interaction because of favorable cloud dynamical and microphysical conditions from the coupling between the Pacific storm track and Asian pollution outflow and the intensity of Pacific storm track may be affected by anthropogenic pollution from the Asian continent. In this talk, we will present results to quantify the impact of Asian pollution outflow on the Pacific storm track, supporting the notion that the storm track can be intensified by pollution. In addition to radiative forcing on climate, intensification of the Pacific storm track likely impacts the global general circulation due to its fundamental role in meridional heat transport and forcing of stationary waves.