The short-term variability of aerosols and their impact on cloud properties and radiative effect over the Indo-Gangetic Plain

Abstract Anthropogenic activities have been shown to have a significant effect on weather and hence climate. However, discerning them from various observations over a certain region including India has been a challenge due to the large role played by natural variability. We show that anthropogenic signals in terms of sub-weekly scale are quite significant (of the order of 20%) in aerosol loading over the Indo-Gangetic Plains. These, in turn, clouds become thinner and less reflective with weekly variations of aerosol, which indicate the possible effect of aerosol on clouds. In terms of changes to Short Wave (SW) and Long Wave (LW) radiation fluxes, we find that change in aerosol direct effect is larger during cloudy sky conditions than clear sky conditions showing that aerosol induced changes to dynamics and hence clouds are dominant factors. This is also manifested in changes to cloud macro physical properties such as cloud optical depth (COD), cloud top temperature (CTT), cloud top pressure (CTP) and liquid water path (LWP). The changes in clear-sky and all-sky top of the atmosphere aerosol direct radiative effect (DRE) and cloud radiative effect (CRE) using CERES derived fluxes were found to be ∼ 7 to 10 % different during weekends with respect to weekly means. Similarly, the change in longwave cloud radiative effect is double that of the shortwave CRE.