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The possible influence of Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) on winter haze days in China at interannual and decadal time scales is investigated using the observed haze-day data from 329 meteorological stations, National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Centers for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) reanalysis, and a SST dataset for 1978-2012. Wintertime haze days in China show robust interannual variations and significant increases over time. The SST anomalies over the North Atlantic from summer to the following winter exhibit a significant in-phase relationship with winter haze days on both decadal and interannual time scales, whereas the anomalous negative-positive SSTs from north to south over the South Atlantic from autumn to the following winter show a significant positive relationship with winter haze days on the interannual time scale. The anomalous warm SST over the North Atlantic, i.e., the positive phase of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO), corresponds to the positive phase of the Arctic oscillation (AO). This result implies that a stable mean flow and strong westerly anomalies exist over north China. The anomalous dipole pattern in the South Atlantic results in the abnormal southerly airflow in the troposphere over eastern China. Neither the westerly anomalies over north China nor the southerly anomalies over eastern China, which are associated with the North Atlantic and South Atlantic SST anomalies, respectively, are conducive to occurrences of cold air. Consequently, the weakened cold airflow from north of eastern China suppresses the dispersion of pollutants over China and results in above-normal haze days.

Continental shelves and slopes host a variety of baroclinic ocean currents, which can arise from tidal mixing fronts (

Abstract.A comprehensive aerosol-cloud-precipitation interaction (ACI) scheme has been developed under a China Meteorological Administration (CMA) chemical weather modeling system, GRAPES/CUACE (Global/Regional Assimilation and PrEdiction System, CMA Unified Atmospheric Chemistry Environment). Calculated by a sectional aerosol activation scheme based on the information of size and mass from CUACE and the thermal-dynamic and humid states from the weather model GRAPES at each time step, the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are interactively fed online into a two-moment cloud scheme (WRF DoubleMoment 6-class scheme -WDM6) and a convective parameterization to drive cloud physics and precipitation formation processes. The modeling system has been applied to study the ACI for January 2013 when several persistent haze-fog events and eight precipitation events occurred.The results show that aerosols that interact with the WDM6 in GRAPES/CUACE obviously increase the total cloud water, liquid water content, and cloud droplet number concentrations, while decreasing the mean diameters of cloud droplets with varying magnitudes of the changes in each case and region. These interactive microphysical properties of clouds improve the calculation of their collection growth rates in some regions and hence the precipitation rate and distributions in the model, showing 24 to 48 % enhancements of threat score for 6 h precipitation in almost all regions. The aerosols that interact with the WDM6 also reduce the regional mean bias of temperature by 3 • C during certain precipitation events, but the monthly means bias is only reduced by about 0.3 • C.