A Sensitivity Study of Aerosol Effects on an Idealized Supercell Storm

One of the largest uncertainties in future climate projections lies in the climatic effects of aerosols. It has been shown that the cooling effect of aerosols could partially offset the current global warming induced by increased greenhouse gas concentration. Among the effects of aerosols, the interaction between aerosols and deep convective clouds is especially difficult to quantify, due to the complex interaction and limited measurements available. Although the radiative effect of deep convective clouds on climate is small, they could affect the local, regional, and global climate by altering precipitation and the large-scale circulations. Thus, it is of importance to understand how deep convection changes its development and evolution with aerosol loading. This study aims to understand the effects of varying aerosol number concentrations on deep convective clouds, using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. A quarter-circular shear supercell is simulated with three different microphysics schemes in an idealized setting, while mimicking the changes in aerosol concentration by changing either cloud droplet concentration or activated cloud condensation nuclei concentration. We find that the simulated amount of precipitation has quite different sensitivities to aerosol concentration, depending on the microphysics scheme used; one of the simulations shows a drastic decrease in precipitation with increased aerosol loading, whereas simulations with the other two schemes show relatively low sensitivities to aerosol concentration. This fact highlights uncertainties in the complex microphysical interactions in convective clouds. In addition, changes in ice nuclei concentration are mimicked by changing the ice nucleation rate in each scheme. Sensitivity to this variation is also dependent on the microphysics scheme used. Furthermore, radiation is added in the simulations so that both radiative and microphysical effects of aerosol on the supercell storm are included. Thus, this study assesses the total effects of aerosols with different microphysics schemes in WRF and discusses the reason for the different sensitivities among different microphysics schemes.