Tiny rain makers: How aerosols shape extreme rainfall simulation accuracy

Highlights
•Sea salt aerosols derives higher rainfall simulation performance than anthropogenic aerosols.
•Aerosol transport from Europe leads to poor rainfall simulations.
•Winter and autumn simulations are better than spring and summer simulations.

Given the rapid spatiotemporal variability of aerosols and their complex impacts on the Earth system, investigating the role of aerosols in modelling extreme weather events, particularly various extreme rainfalls, remains limited. This study explored extreme rainfall simulation sensitivity to aerosol properties, transport and seasonality over the UK and Ireland during four seasons in 2020 by the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model. Two sets of high-resolution simulations, one including aerosol direct and indirect effects and the other one without any aerosol effects, were conducted to investigate the improvements due to aerosol inputs. Meteorological results were verified using ground and satellite observations to examine the reliability of simulations. The 12 extreme rainfall events during the study months were classified by their backward trajectories from the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model, and their simulation accuracies were quantified through six spatiotemporal metrics and one overall score. By comprehensive analyses of the simulation performances under different conditions, it is found that the model performs better in simulating rainfall events driven by sea salt aerosols (SSA) compared to those promoted by anthropogenic aerosols. Air masses transported from the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean also help achieve higher rainfall simulation accuracy than European air masses. Rainfall simulations for winter and autumn events outperform those for spring and summer events. When considering aerosol effects in simulations, almost half of the events showed improved performance, while an equal number experienced a decrease and a small proportion remained unchanged. The most remarkable improvements are observed in rainfall simulations with higher concentrations of SSA and the participation of anthropogenic aerosols, while simulations promoted only by anthropogenic aerosols all experience performance reductions. The aerosol effects also led to significant increases in monthly rainfalls, accompanied by great reductions of Cl in larger particle size aerosols and NO3 in smaller particle size aerosols.