A Study of the Effects of Anthropogenic Gaseous Emissions on the Microphysical Properties of Landfalling Typhoon Nida (2016) over China

Abstract

Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with chemistry module (WRF-Chem), Typhoon Nida (2016) was simulated to investigate the effects of anthropogenic gaseous emissions on the vortex system. Based on the Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC), three certain experiments were conducted: one with base-level emission intensity (CTRL), one with one-tenth the emission of SO2 (SO2_C), and one with one-tenth the emission of NH3 (NH3_C). Results show that the simulations reasonably reproduced the typhoon’s track and intensity, which were slightly sensitive to the anthropogenic gaseous emissions. When the typhoon was located over the ocean, a prolonged duration of raindrop growth and more precipitation occurred in CTRL run. The strongest updraft in CTRL is attributed to the maximum latent heating through water vapor condensation. During the landfalling period, larger (smaller) differential reflectivities in the main-core of the vortex were produced in NH3_C (SO2_C) run. Such opposite changes of raindrop size distributions may lead to stronger (weaker) rainfall intensity, and the ice-related microphysical processes and the relative humidity in low troposphere were two possible influential factors. Moreover, additional ten-member ensemble results in which white noise perturbations were added to the potential temperature field, indicated that the uncertainty of thermodynamic field in the current numerical model should not be ignored when exploring the impacts of aerosol on the microphysics and TC precipitation.