Effects of aerosols on microphysics and on urban warm season precipitation

Precipitation anomalies in and around major urban centers have been attributed to dynamic processes such as warm air updrafts induced by urban heat island events, and to microphysical processes affected by the release of natural and anthropogenic aerosols that affect atmospheric water balance. Both factors must be analyzed in order to fully understand the role that urban environments may have on precipitation. The research presented here is directed towards improving understanding of how aerosol particle size distribution (PSD) and land cover land use (LCLU) affect cloud processes and precipitation over a complex urban environment such as New York City (NYC). While aerosols are intrinsically necessary for rainfall formation, and urban environments also influence precipitation via convection enhancement, the partial contributions of each are not yet known. The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) was used to simulate several NYC summer precipitation scenarios. PSD data from NASA's Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) complemented with National Land Cover Database (NLCD) 2006 land surface data for NYC and northern New Jersey (NJ) were processed and assimilated directly into RAMS to determine the effect of varying PSD and LCLU on simulated precipitation amounts. An ensemble of 17 numerical simulations were configured and run. The first two runs were month long runs for July 2007, the first with constant PSD values, and the second with PSD updates. The third and fourth runs mirrored the first two simulations for a "No-City" case. A fifth month long simulation was run with average Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) and Giant CCN values. Next, twelve 24 hour simulations driven with high volumes of fine mode particles and with high volumes of coarse mode particles each under "City" and "No City" conditions were compared for 1-day localized and mesoscale events. Results suggest that RAMS precipitation results are sensitive to both PSD variation and land use variations.