TY - JOUR
T1 - On the Relevance of Aerosols to Snow Cover Variability Over High Mountain Asia
AU - Roychoudhury, Chayan
AU - He, Cenlin
AU - Kumar, Rajesh
AU - McKinnon, John M.
AU - Arellano, Avelino F.
N1 - Funding Information: This work is supported by a NASA HiMAT2 grant (#NNH19ZDA001N). The authors acknowledge the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) (sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF)) for this ongoing work. HiMAT2 is an interdisciplinary effort to understand the cryospheric and hydrological state of HMA. This work is in tandem with the goals of the Aerosol subgroup under HiMAT2 that seeks to quantify the deposition of aerosols over snow in HMA. Publisher Copyright: © 2022. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2022/9/28
Y1 - 2022/9/28
N2 - While meteorology and aerosols are identified as key drivers of snow cover (SC) variability in High Mountain Asia, complex non-linear interactions between them are not adequately quantified. Here, we attempt to unravel these interactions through a simple relative importance (RI) analysis of meteorological and aerosol variables from ERA5/CAMS-EAC4 reanalysis against satellite-derived SC from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer across 2003–2018. Our results show a statistically significant 7% rise in the RI of aerosol-meteorology interactions (AMI) in modulating SC during late snowmelt season (June and July), notably over low snow-covered (LSC) regions. Sensitivity tests further reveal that the importance of meteorological interactions with individual aerosol species are more prominent than total aerosols over LSC regions. We find that the RI of AMI for LSC regions is clearly dominated by carbonaceous aerosols, on top of the expected importance of dynamic meteorology. These findings clearly highlight the need to consider AMI in hydrometeorological monitoring, modeling, and reanalyses.
AB - While meteorology and aerosols are identified as key drivers of snow cover (SC) variability in High Mountain Asia, complex non-linear interactions between them are not adequately quantified. Here, we attempt to unravel these interactions through a simple relative importance (RI) analysis of meteorological and aerosol variables from ERA5/CAMS-EAC4 reanalysis against satellite-derived SC from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer across 2003–2018. Our results show a statistically significant 7% rise in the RI of aerosol-meteorology interactions (AMI) in modulating SC during late snowmelt season (June and July), notably over low snow-covered (LSC) regions. Sensitivity tests further reveal that the importance of meteorological interactions with individual aerosol species are more prominent than total aerosols over LSC regions. We find that the RI of AMI for LSC regions is clearly dominated by carbonaceous aerosols, on top of the expected importance of dynamic meteorology. These findings clearly highlight the need to consider AMI in hydrometeorological monitoring, modeling, and reanalyses.
KW - ERA5/CAMS-EAC4
KW - High Mountain Asia
KW - aerosol-meteorology interactions
KW - relative importance
KW - snow cover
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U2 - 10.1029/2022GL099317
DO - 10.1029/2022GL099317
M3 - Article
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 49
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 18
M1 - e2022GL099317
ER -