Insights of aerosol-precipitation nexus in the central Arctic through CMIP6 climate models
Abstract The Arctic is experiencing heightened precipitation, affected by aerosols impacting rainfall and snowfall. However, sparse aerosol observations in the central Arctic cryosphere contribute to uncertainties in simulating aerosol-precipitation two-way interaction. This study examines aerosol-precipitation co-variation in various climate models during the Arctic spring and summer seasons from 2003 to 2011, leveraging satellite-based aerosol data and various CMIP6 climate models. Findings reveal significant spatio-temporal biases between models and observations. Snowfall dominance occurs in models where total AOD surpasses the observation by 121% (57–186%, confidence interval), intensifying simulated snowfall by two times compared to rainfall during summer. Consequently, climate models tend to underestimate central Arctic rainfall to the total precipitation ratio, suggesting a positive bias towards snowfall dominance. This highlights the importance of constraining total AOD and associated aerosol schemes in climate models using satellite measurements, which potentially could lead to a substantial reduction in snowfall contribution to the total precipitation ratio in the central Arctic, contrary to current multi-model simulations across various spatiotemporal scales.
Authors
- Alexander A. Kokhanovsky (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7110-223X)
- Sachin S. Gunthe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7903-7783)
- Basudev Swain (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7450-1279)
- John P. Burrows (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6821-5580)
- R. G. Grainger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0709-1315)
- Luca Lelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6698-1388)
- Julia Schmale (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1048-7962)
- Nisha Patel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4945-9261)
- Adrien Deroubaix (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4464-7802)
- Vittal Hari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8754-0488)
- Marco Vountas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0297-5974)
- Manfred Wendisch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4652-5561)
- Nidhi L. Anchan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5246-6644)
- Chakradhar Reddy Malasani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8711-2395)
- Aishwarya Singh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4061-4034)
- Hartmut Bösch
- Richard Alawode
- Dukhishyam Mallick
Institutions
- University of Kassel (DE)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- University of Bremen (DE)
- Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad (IN)
- Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IN)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (DE)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH)
- Leipzig University (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
- Published
- 2025-03-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-025-00957-6
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.32