Study of Regional Climate Change Final Technical Report
- State Univ. of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY (United States). Atmospheric Sciences Research Center;
Anthropogenic activity of fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions increase tropospheric aerosol concentrations causing a direct cooling effect by scattering solar radiation and thus increasing the Earth’s albedo. In addition, the aerosols can act as cloud condensation nuclei to regulate cloud droplet number and size, thereby changing both the cloud albedo, and the cloud lifetime and precipitation. Thus, the aerosol climate effect concerns intricate aerosol-cloud-radiation-precipitation interactions which are recognized to introduce the largest uncertainties in using GCMs to project future regional climate changes. The climate effects of aerosols are significant in the land regions of the Northern Hemisphere, in particular the sulfate aerosols over East Asia where significant anthropogenic SO2 emissions have been observed and concentrations of other aerosol species are also high. The objective of the present project is to advance “modeling aerosol-cloud-climate interactions” in two areas: the aerosol-cloud microphysics interactions and model simulations of aerosol effects on regional climate with focus on East Asia. To achieve the objective, in addition to analyzing relevant observations, the project conducts and diagnoses regional and global climate model simulations. Specifically, two collaborative tasks were carried out: Task-1: Incorporating a physics-based, two-moments cloud scheme developed by J. P. Chen/National Taiwan University (NTU) into regional models (WRF and WRF-Chem) to study “aerosol-cloud microphysics interactions over eastern China and the southeast Pacific”; for latter region, CMIP5 models exhibit distinct biases in (weaker) cloud radiative effects and (warmer) sea surface temperature. The task is conducted in collaboration with J.-P. Chen, H.-W. Xue/Peking University, and H. Liao/Institute of Atmospheric Physics; and Task-2: Diagnosis of NCAR-CESM and WRF model simulations of “aerosol climate effects” focusing on changes of circulation, precipitation and clouds over East Asia. The task is conducted in collaboration with J.-P. Chen, and I-Chun Tsai & H.-H. Hsu/Academia Sinica. For each task, several topical studies were carried out and documented in eleven (11) articles (five for Task-1 and six for Task-2), published in: J. Atmospheric Sciences (2); J. Climate (1); Climate Dynamics (3); J. Geophysical Research (2); Geophysical Research Letter (1); Int. J. Climatology (1); and Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (1). In addition, Wei-Chyung Wang (the PI) continues serving as the U. S. Chief Scientist for the joint agreement, “Climate Sciences”, between the U. S. DOE and China Ministry of Sciences and Technology (Riches et al., 2010). In this capacity, he works closely with Michael Riches/DOE (the U. S. Manager) to coordinate the scientific exchanges (visiting scientists) between the two countries. Educations (graduate students) and trainings (postdoctoral research associates) are key elements of the research project.
- Research Organization:
- State Univ. of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Earth and Environmental Systems Science Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-92ER61369
- OSTI ID:
- 1497709
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-SUNYA-ER61369
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Use of ARM observations and numerical models to determine radiative and latent heating profiles of mesoscale convective systems for general circulation models
Incorporating an advanced aerosol activation parameterization into WRF-CAM5: Model evaluation and parameterization intercomparison