Impacts of Anthropogenic Aerosols on Fog in North China Plain.

Fog poses a severe environmental problem in the North China Plain, China, which has been witnessing increases in anthropogenic emission since the early 1980s. This work first uses the WRF/Chem model coupled with the local anthropogenic emissions to simulate and evaluate a severe fog event occurring in North China Plain. Comparison of the simulations against observations shows that WRF/Chem well reproduces the general features of temporal evolution of PM2.5 mass concentration, fog spatial distribution, visibility, and vertical profiles of temperature, water vapor content, and relative humidity in the planetary boundary layer throughout the whole period of the fog event. Sensitivity studies are then performed with five different levels of anthropogenic emission as model inputs to systematically examine the comprehensive impacts of aerosols on fog microphysical, macrophysical, radiative, and dynamical properties. The results show that as aerosol concentration increases, fog droplet number concentration and liquid water content all increase nonlinearly; but effective radius decreases. Macrophysical properties (fog fraction, fog duration, fog height, and liquid water path) also increase nonlinearly with increasing aerosol concentration, with rates of changes smaller than microphysical properties. Further analysis reveals distinct aerosol effects on thermodynamic and dynamical conditions during different stages of fog evolution: increasing aerosols invigorate fog formation and development by enhancing longwave‐induced instability, fog droplet condensation accompanying latent heat release, and thus turbulence, but delay fog dissipation by reducing surface solar radiation, surface sensible, and latent heat fluxes, and thus suppressing turbulence during the dissipation stage. Key Points: Aerosols strengthen and prolong fog events in polluted environmentAerosol effects are stronger on microphysical properties than macrophysical propertiesTurbulence is enhanced by aerosols during fog formation and growth but suppressed during fog dissipation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]