Exploring Aerosol Effects on Rainfall for Brisbane, Australia

Climate

Michael Hewson³  Hamish McGowan³  Stuart Phinn²  Steven Peckham¹ 

[1] Earth Systems Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO 80305-3337, USA; E-Mails:;Biophysical Remote Sensing Group, The School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Queensland 4072, Australia; E-Mail:;Climate Research Group, The School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Queensland 4072, Australia; E-Mail:

关键词: natural and anthropogenic emission;    spatial analysis;    geostatistics;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cli1030120

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The majority of studies assessing aerosol effects on rainfall use coarse spatial scale (1° latitude/longitude or more) and multi-seasonal or decadal data sets. Here, we present results from a spatial correlation of aerosol size distribution and rain rate for selected stratiform and cumuliform precipitation events. The chemistry transport version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model was used to estimate aerosol parameters during rain events Aerosol maps were then compared with observations of rainfall using geostatistics for the first time. The cross-variogram analysis showed that anthropogenic aerosol was associated with areas of less intense rain within the stratiform system studied. For cumuliform systems, cross-variogram analysis found that anthropogenic emissions may be associated with enhanced rain downwind of aerosol emissions. We conclude that geostatistics provides a promising new technique to investigate relationships between aerosols and rainfall at spatial scales of 1 km which complements more commonly used methods to study aerosol effects on rainfall.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.