Aerosol First Indirect Effects on Non-Precipitating Low-Level Liquid Cloud Properties as Simulated by CAM5 at ARM Sites

[1] We quantitatively examine the aerosol first indirect effects (FIE) for non-precipitating low-level single-layer liquid phase clouds simulated by the Community Atmospheric Model version 5 (CAM5) running in the weather forecast mode at three DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites. The FIE is quantified in terms of a relative change in cloud droplet effective radius for a relative change in accumulation mode aerosol number concentration under conditions of fixed liquid water content (LWC). CAM5 simulates aerosol-cloud interactions reasonably well for this specific cloud type, and the simulated FIE is consistent with the long-term observations at the examined locations. The FIE in CAM5 generally decreases with LWC at coastal ARM sites, and is larger by using cloud condensation nuclei rather than accumulation mode aerosol number concentration as the choice of aerosol amount. However, it has no significant variations with location and has no systematic strong seasonal variations at examined ARM sites.