UMU Regional Atmospheric Modeling Group
The study, conducted by UMU’s Department of Earth Physics, has just been published in the journal. Development of a geoscientific modelstudies how aerosols interact with atmospheric rivers.
Three researchers from the Regional Atmospheric Modeling Group, belonging to the Department of Earth Physics of the University of Murcia (UMU), carried out a study on the sensitivity of atmospheric rivers to aerosol processing in regional climate simulations. This is a study published in a renowned journal Development of a geoscientific modelreveals what they catalog as “significant discoveries that may have important implications for understanding and predicting these phenomena.”
The study focused on the Iberian Peninsula between 1991 and 2010 using three various experiments to study the influence of aerosols. In them It ranged from considering predefined aerosols to including effects caused by aerosol-radiation or aerosol-cloud interactions. The highlight of the research was the development of an innovative regional-scale atmospheric river identification algorithm called AIRA, which was able to identify about 250 rivers in each experiment.
The results obtained showed that atmospheric rivers account for up to 30% of the total amount of precipitation accumulated at some points on the western coast of the peninsula, and the most intense and prolonged precipitation occurred in spring and autumn. In addition, it was observed that the inclusion of aerosol effects leads to a redistribution of precipitation with increasing areas of influence.
The main finding of this study is that the sensitivity of atmospheric rivers to different aerosol treatments is relevant. Depending on the configuration of these the model induced spatial biases and changes in the magnitude of water vapor transport by atmospheric rivers compared to the reference simulation. These results highlight the importance of incorporating aerosol forcing into atmospheric river behavior modeling, especially at regional scales, to improve meteorological forecasts.
Each year, about 10 atmospheric rivers impact the Iberian Peninsula – filament-like structures more than 1,000 km long that transport large amounts of water vapor from the equatorial Atlantic. Its arrival allows water resources to be restored, but can also trigger major floods in affected areas. On the other hand, aerosols, small particles suspended in the atmosphere, interact with solar radiation, absorbing and scattering it, and play a fundamental role as condensation nuclei, contributing to the formation of clouds.
As the team noted, “This study represents a significant advance in our understanding of the interactions between aerosols and atmospheric rivers, highlighting the need to incorporate these factors into climate models to improve modeling accuracy.”
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This work was supported by a pre-doctoral fellowship awarded to Raluy-López by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (ref. FPU21/02464).
Access to article: Raluy-Lopez E., Montaves J.P. and Jiménez-Guerrero, P.: Sensitivity of atmospheric rivers to aerosol treatment in regional climate simulations: evidence from the AIRA identification algorithm, Geoscientific Model Development, 17, 1469– 1495, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-1469-2024 , 2024.