Relationships Between Aerosols, Warm Clouds, and Meteorological Factors Associated With Environmental Conditions Derived From Multiyear ARM Observations

Abstract We derive new aspects between clouds, aerosols, and meteorological factors using latest observations. We analyze multiyear measurements of atmospheric physical properties including warm clouds and aerosols collected at Atmospheric Radiation Measurement continental and maritime facilities during 2016–2020 and 2015–2021, respectively. Diurnal variation of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) collocated with a neighboring cloud results from adjacent low tropospheric vertical wind shear (VWS 725–925 hPa ) due to aerosols originating from soils stirred up by enhanced turbulence at Southern Great Plains (SGP). There are similarities between seasons (summer or winter) and surface wind directions (north or south) with respect to the relations between aerosol‐cloud, cloud‐cloud, and cloud‐meteorological factor at the maritime Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) site, as well as with respect to diurnal variations of clouds, aerosols, and meteorological factors at both sites. Particularly, there is a strong similarity in the diurnal variation of convective available potential energy at SGP. At ENA over the ocean, aerosol‐cloud‐meteorological relationships, such as the relationship between cloud top height and AOD can be interpreted in terms of a temperature inversion at the top of the marine boundary layer. Some cloud properties, for example, the cloud thickness responds as “V”‐ or “Λ”‐shapes to the aerosol thickness at SGP and vice versa at ENA. There are reciprocal seasonal variations in dependence of cloud properties, for example, cloud extinction coefficient on aerosol scale height between SGP and ENA. The aerosol‐cloud horizontal configuration (i.e., which side of the cloud an aerosol profile is located on) can affect the relations between aerosol‐cloud properties, particularly the sign of linear trend slope in aerosol‐cloud relationships.