Observational evidence for aerosols increasing upper tropospheric humidity

Riuttanen, Laura; Bister, Marja; Kerminen, Veli-Matti; John, Viju O.; Sundström, Anu-Maija; Dal Maso, Miikka; Räisänen, Jouni; Sinclair, Victoria A.; Makkonen, Risto; Xausa, Filippo; de Leeuw, Gerrit; Kulmala, Markku

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-14331-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-14331-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX)

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-14331-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 22

Research article

|

17 Nov 2016

Research article |

| 17 Nov 2016

Observational evidence for aerosols increasing upper tropospheric humidity

Laura Riuttanen, Marja Bister, Veli-Matti Kerminen, Viju O. John, Anu-Maija Sundström, Miikka Dal Maso, Jouni Räisänen, Victoria A. Sinclair, Risto Makkonen, Filippo Xausa, Gerrit de Leeuw, and Markku Kulmala

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Final revised paper (published on 17 Nov 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 08 Jul 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'comments on acp-2016-561', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Aug 2016
- AC1: 'Authors' reply to Referee #1', Laura Riuttanen, 14 Oct 2016
RC2: 'Comments on “Observational evidence for aerosols increasing upper tropospheric humidity” by Riuttanen et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'Authors' reply to Referee #2', Laura Riuttanen, 14 Oct 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Laura Riuttanen on behalf of the Authors (14 Oct 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (19 Oct 2016) by Aijun Ding

AR by Laura Riuttanen on behalf of the Authors (28 Oct 2016)

Short summary

Here we show observational evidence that aerosols increase upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) via changes in the microphysics of deep convection. Using remote sensing data over the ocean east of China in summer, we show that increased aerosol loads are associated with an UTH increase of 2.2 ± 1.5 in units of relative humidity. We show that humidification of aerosols or other meteorological covariation is very unlikely to be the cause for this result indicating relevance for the global climate.