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Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions and Rainfall Decline in South-West Australia

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High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ´16

Abstract

It is commonly understood that the observed decline in precipitation in South-West Australia during the twentieth century is caused by anthropogenic factors. In our project wa-aero on ForHLR1, we focus on the role of rapidly rising aerosol emissions from anthropogenic sources in South-West Australia around 1970. An analysis of historical longterm rainfall data of the Bureau of Meteorology shows that South-West Australia as a whole experienced a gradual decline in precipitation over the twentieth century. However, on smaller scales and for the particular example of the Perth catchment area, a sudden drop in precipitation around 1970 is apparent. Modelling experiments at a convection-resolving resolution of 3.3 km using the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.6.1 with the aerosol-aware Thompson-Eidhammer microphysics scheme are conducted for the period 1970–1974. A comparison of four runs with different prescribed aerosol emissions and without aerosol effects demonstrates that tripling the pre-1960s atmospheric CCN and IN concentrations, as suggested by air-borne measurements, can suppress precipitation by 2–9 %, depending on the area and the season. An extended version of the results presented here was accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate in June 2016.

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Acknowledgements

The modelling experiments presented here required more than 2 Mio CPUh and were conducted on the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Steinbruch Centre for Computing (KIT-SCC) ForHLR1 supercomputer. The authors acknowledge the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for the dissemination of ERA40, the NOAA/OAR/ ESRL PSD, Boulder for providing the UDEL air temperature and precipitation data and the HadSLP2 sea level pressure data, the University of East Anglia, Climate Research Unit, for access to the CRU air temperature and precipitation data, and the Bureau of Meteorology, Australia, for the dissemination of the daily rainfall climate data. The authors are particularly grateful for the support of Greg Thompson (NCAR) in the design of the experiment and the setup of the WRF model.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK-IFU), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kreuzeckbahnstr.19, 82467, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

    Dominikus Heinzeller & Harald Kunstmann

  2. Department of Geography, Augsburg University, 86135, Augsburg, Germany

    Dominikus Heinzeller & Harald Kunstmann

  3. IMK-IFU, KIT, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Kreuzeckbahnstr.19, 82467, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

    Wolfgang Junkermann

Authors
  1. Dominikus Heinzeller
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  2. Wolfgang Junkermann
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  3. Harald Kunstmann
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Correspondence to Dominikus Heinzeller .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Zentrum für Informationsdienste und Hochleistungsrechnen (ZIH), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Wolfgang E. Nagel

  2. Abteilung für Angewandte Mathematik, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Dietmar H. Kröner

  3. Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart (HLRS), Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Michael M. Resch

Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 WRF model configuration for the different domains at 30 km, 10 km and 3.33 km resolution and for the different types of high-resolution runs
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Heinzeller, D., Junkermann, W., Kunstmann, H. (2016). Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions and Rainfall Decline in South-West Australia. In: Nagel, W.E., Kröner, D.H., Resch, M.M. (eds) High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ´16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47066-5_38

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