A13A-3142:
Relationship of regional PM2.5 variations in east Asia and climate variability in the North Pacific

Monday, 15 December 2014
Jihyeon So1, Sang-Wook Yeh1, Minjoong Kim2 and Rokjin Park2, (1)Hanyang University, Marine Sciences and Convergent Technology, Seoul, South Korea, (2)Seoul National University, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul, South Korea
Abstract:
Recent studies have suggested that the Short Lived Climate Pollutants (SLCPs) such as Sulfate aerosols, Black carbon, Seasalt play a role to influence the weather and climate variability by changing radiative forcings. Therefore, it is useful to examine the relationship between atmospheric variability and SLCPs. Particularly, the concentration of Particle Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) is significant in east Asia, which is mostly due to a rapid industrialization. It is known that both the atmospheric circulation and cloud variability is closely associated with the variations of PM2.5 in east Asia are associated with major atmospheric variables for 1986-2010 using the GEOS-Chem model and the observational datasets. The composite analysis reveals that the high and low concentration year of PM2.5 in east Asia is differently associated with the spatial pattern of atmospheric anomalies over the North Pacific. In addition, the changes in the PM2.5 concentration in east Asia may lead the changes in the amount of high and low cloud in the downstream region of the North Pacific. This indicates that the PM2.5 variations in east Asia may significantly influence the weather and climate variability in the North Pacific by modulating the cloud amount and atmospheric circulation, which is largely consistent with some previous studies.