Abstract
We examine past and future changes in both winter haze and clear weather conditions over the North China Plain (NCP) using a perturbed parameter ensemble (PPE) and elucidate the influence of model physical parameterizations on these future projections for the first time. We use a large-scale meteorology-based haze weather index (HWI) with values >1 as a proxy for haze-conducive weather and HWI <-1 for clear weather conditions over the NCP. The PPE generated using the UK Met Office's HadGEM-GC3 model shows that under a high-emission (RCP8.5) scenario, the frequency of haze-conducive weather (HWI >1) is likely to increase whereas the frequency of clear weather (HWI <-1) is likely to decrease in the future with a growing influence of climate change over the 21st century. Nevertheless, a reduction in the frequency of haze-conducive weather and increment in the frequency of clear weather, though less likely, is also possible. In the future, the frequency of haze-conducive weather for a given winter could be as much as g∼3.5 times higher than the frequency of clear weather over the NCP. More frequent haze-conducive weather (HWI >1) during winter over the NCP is found to be associated with an enhanced warming of the troposphere and weaker northwesterlies in the mid-troposphere over the NCP. We also examined the changes in the interannual variability of the haze-conducive and clear weather and found no marked changes in the variability during future periods. We find a clear influence of model physical parametrizations on climatological mean frequencies for both haze-conducive and clear weather. For the mid-to late 21st century (2033-2086), the parametric effect can explain up to ∼80% of the variance in the climatological mean frequencies of PPE members. This shows that different model physical parameterizations lead to a different evolution of the model's mean climate, particularly towards the end of the 21st century. Therefore, it is desirable to consider the PPE in addition to the initialized and multimodel ensembles to obtain a more comprehensive range of plausible future projections.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 7443-7460 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 10 Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements. We thank Li Ke for the discussion on the HWI calculation and Peiqun Zhang for the discussion on severe haze episodes in China. Ruth M. Doherty and Zongbo Shi also acknowledge the NERC for funding under the Atmospheric Pollution and Human Health Programme: grant nos. NE/N006941/1 and NE/N007190/1. Chaofan Li was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant no. 2018YFA0606501). We also thank the two reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on this manuscript.
Financial support. This work and its contributors (Shipra Jain, Ruth M. Doherty, David Sexton, Steven Turnock, Zongbo Shi) were supported by the UK-China Research & Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China as part of the Newton Fund (Met Office Reference Number DN37368).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Shipra Jain et al.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Atmospheric Science