@article{473b51790108454ea791b046e6ed997c,
title = "Sensitivity of summertime convection to aerosol loading and properties in the united arab emirates",
abstract = "The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to investigate convection– aerosol interactions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a summertime convective event. Both an idealized and climatological aerosol distributions are considered. The convection on 14 August 2013 was triggered by the low-level convergence of the cyclonic circulation associated with the Arabian Heat Low (AHL) and the daytime sea-breeze circulation. Numerical experiments reveal a high sensitivity to aerosol properties. In particular, replacing 20% of the rural aerosols by carbonaceous particles has a comparable impact on the surface radiative fluxes to increasing the aerosol loading by a factor of 10. In both cases, the UAE-averaged net shortwave flux is reduced by ~90 W m−2 while the net longwave flux increases by ~51 W m−2 . However, when the aerosol composition is changed, WRF generates 20% more precipitation than when the aerosol loading is increased, due to a broader and weaker AHL. The surface downward and upward shortwave and upward longwave radiation fluxes are found to scale linearly with the aerosol loading. An increase in the amount of aerosols also leads to drier conditions and a delay in the onset of convection due to changes in the AHL.",
keywords = "Aerosol loading, Aerosol properties, Cold pools, Convection, Numerical modelling",
author = "Ricardo Fonseca and Diana Francis and Michael Weston and Narendra Nelli and Sufian Farah and Youssef Wehbe and Taha Alhosari and Oriol Teixido and Ruqaya Mohamed",
note = "Funding Information: Funding: This research was funded by UAEREP, project number 8434000263. Funding Information: Acknowledgments: This work is supported by the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), under the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP). The authors thank the NCM for providing the weather station and air quality observations over the UAE, under an agreement with clauses for non-disclosure of data. Access to these data is restricted and readers should request them through contacting
[email protected]. We would also like to thank the UAE NCM for kindly providing radiosonde data at Abu Dhabi{\textquoteright}s International Airport through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive{\textquoteright}s website (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/weather-balloon/integrated-global-radiosonde-archive, accessed on 8 August 2021). The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager data were extracted from The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites{\textquoteright} website (https://eoportal.eumetsat.int/, accessed on 8 August 2021); the Infrared Brightness Temperature data were downloaded from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration{\textquoteright}s website (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_MERGIR_1/summary, accessed on 8 August 2021) as was the case for the MERRA-2 data (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?project=MERRA-2, accessed on 8 August 2021); the ERA-5 data are available on the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast{\textquoteright}s Copernicus website (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/, accessed on 8 August 2021). The authors also wish to acknowledge the major contribution of Khalifa University{\textquoteright}s high-performance computing and research facilities to the results of this research. We are also grateful to the four anonymous reviewers of this work for their detailed and insightful comments and suggestions which helped to significantly improve the quality of the manuscript. Funding Information: This research was funded by UAEREP, project number 8434000263. This work is supported by the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), under the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP). The authors thank the NCM for providing the weather station and air quality observations over the UAE, under an agreement with clauses for non-disclosure of data. Access to these data is restricted and readers should request them through contacting
[email protected]. We would also like to thank the UAE NCM for kindly providing radiosonde data at Abu Dhabi?s International Airport through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive?s website (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/weather-balloon/integrated-global-radiosonde-archive, accessed on 8 August 2021). The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager data were extracted from The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites? website (https://eoportal.eumetsat.int/, accessed on 8 August 2021); the Infrared Bright-ness Temperature data were downloaded from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration?s website (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/GPM_MERGIR_1/summary, accessed on 8 August 2021) as was the case for the MERRA-2 data (https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?project=MERRA-2, accessed on 8 August 2021); the ERA-5 data are available on the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast?s Copernicus website (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/, accessed on 8 August 2021). The authors also wish to acknowledge the major contribution of Khalifa University?s high-performance computing and research facilities to the results of this research. We are also grate-ful to the four anonymous reviewers of this work for their detailed and insightful comments and suggestions which helped to significantly improve the quality of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.",
year = "2021",
month = dec,
doi = "10.3390/atmos12121687",
language = "British English",
volume = "12",
journal = "Atmosphere",
issn = "2073-4433",
publisher = "Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)",
number = "12",
}