Zhao, Chuanfeng and Lin, Yanluan and Wu, Fang and Wang, Yang and Li, Zhanqing and Rosenfeld, Daniel and Wang, Yuan (2018) Enlarging rainfall area of tropical cyclones by atmospheric aerosols. Geophysical Research Letters, 45 (16). pp. 8604-8611. ISSN 0094-8276. doi:10.1029/2018GL079427. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180801-154408456
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Abstract
The size of a tropical cyclone (TC), measured by the area of either rainfall or wind, is an important indicator for the potential damage by TC. Modeling studies suggested that aerosols tend to enhance rainfall in the outer rainbands, which enlarges the eyewall radius and expands the extent of rainfall area. However, no observational evidence has yet been reported. Using TC rainfall area and aerosol optical depth (AOD) data, we find that aerosols have a distinguishable footprint in the TC size. Other dynamical factors for TC size, such as relative SST and Coriolis parameter, are also quantified and discussed. We show that, on average, TC rainfall size increases 9–20 km for each 0.1 increase of AOD in the western North Pacific. This finding implies that anthropogenic aerosol pollution can increase not only TC rainfall rate, but also TC rainfall area, resulting in potentially more destructive flooding affecting larger areas.
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| Additional Information: | © 2018 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Received 28 MAR 2018; Accepted 23 JUL 2018; Accepted article online 1 AUG 2018; Published online 19 AUG 2018. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2017YFC1501403), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41575143), the “1000 plan” Young Scholar Foundation, the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017EYT18). The AOD data from MERRA2 and MODIS are downloaded from https://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/M2I3NXGAS_V5.12.4/summary?keywords=inst3_2d_gas_Nx and https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/search/order/2/MOD08_D3‐‐6, respectively. The SST from HadSST is obtained from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst3/data/HadSST.3.1.1.0/diagnostics/HadSST.3.1.1.0_monthly_globe_ts.txt. The tropical cyclone best track data from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) is obtained from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ibtracs/index.php?name=wmo‐data. The rainfall data from TRMM is obtained from https://pmm.nasa.gov/data‐access/downloads/trmm. | ||||||||||||||
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| Subject Keywords: | tropical cyclone; rainfall area; aerosol optical depth; rainfall intensity; western North Pacific | ||||||||||||||
| Issue or Number: | 16 | ||||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1029/2018GL079427 | ||||||||||||||
| Record Number: | CaltechAUTHORS:20180801-154408456 | ||||||||||||||
| Persistent URL: | https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180801-154408456 | ||||||||||||||
| Official Citation: | Zhao, C., Lin, Y., Wu, F., Wang, Y., Li, Z., Rosenfeld, D., & Wang, Y. (2018). Enlarging rainfall area of tropical cyclones by atmospheric aerosols. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 8604–8611. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL079427 | ||||||||||||||
| Usage Policy: | No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. | ||||||||||||||
| ID Code: | 88477 | ||||||||||||||
| Collection: | CaltechAUTHORS | ||||||||||||||
| Deposited By: | Tony Diaz | ||||||||||||||
| Deposited On: | 01 Aug 2018 22:52 | ||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 16 Nov 2021 00:27 |
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