Why is ARM Climate Research Facility needed on the west coast of Korea?

 

Authors

Byung-Gon Kim — Gangneung-Wonju National University
Seoung-Soo Lee — University of Michigan
Kwon-Ho Lee — University of Maryland
Lim-Seok Chang — Global Environmental Research Center
Sang-Woo Kim — Seoul National University
Seong Soo Yum — Yonsei University
Jhoon Kim — Yonsei University
Maeng-Ki Kim — Kongju National University

Young-Joon Kim — Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
Gyuwon Lee — Kyungpook National University
Young-Sung Ghim — Hankook University of Foreign Studies
Meehye Lee — Korea University

Category

Field Campaigns

Description

Study domain with measurement locations (red diamond) proposed in the text. Blue diamond denotes stations used in the previous AMF-China. Gosan on the west coast of Jeju Island or Anmyeon on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula will be the major site for the AMF deployment. Both are about 500 km to the east of the Chinese continental coastline. The final decision will be made after consultation of the AMF2 site experts. If one is selected as the major site, the other and the Baengnyeong site will be used as complementary sites. All three sites are equipped with aerosol observing systems (AOS) largely equivalent to AMF AOS. Because of the dominant westerly winds in this midlatitude region, all three sites are strategically located for monitoring continental outflow. Uniquely to these sites, evolution of aerosol properties during the transport over the Yellow Sea can also be monitored.
Fast economic growth and increases of industrial activities in East Asia are equally matched with the fast increase of anthropogenic aerosols in this region. The Yellow Sea between the Chinese continent and the Korean Peninsula provides a long enough time and space for the aerosols emitted from the source region in China to be processed during the transport. Furthermore, the weather and precipitation patterns in East Asia are dominantly affected by seasonal monsoon, adding complexity to ever-changing aerosol conditions in this region. Thus, East Asia is a strategically important region for studying the effects of aerosols on climate change. The first international aerosol measurement campaign in the East Asian region, Aerosol Characterization Experiment-Asia (ACE-Asia), took place during the spring of 2001 off the coast of China, Japan, and Korea (Huebert et al. 2003). However, the intensive measurement period was limited only to the spring season, and the main focus was on dust particles. The Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABC) East Asian Experiment (ABC-EAREX) in 2005 and continued effort afterwards put more emphasis on the characterization of black carbon (BC) and its radiative forcing in East Asia (Nakajima et al. 2007, Ramana et al. 2010). Despite these efforts, East Asia remains one of the least-observed regions in the world especially in terms of aerosol and cloud properties. For these reasons, the ARM Mobile Facility-China (AMF-China) experiment was carried out in China in 2008–2009, but detailed aerosol-cloud interaction mechanisms in East Asia are still poorly understood due to few synchronized aerosol and cloud samplings undertaken. Further, the recent studies (Kim et al. 2007, Lee and Kim 2010) suggested that spring precipitation in East Asia may be shifted northward and reduced as a result of the modulation of the jet stream and associated secondary circulation at the entrance of the jet stream induced by the aerosol forcing. The broad spectrum of aerosol properties and meteorological environments in East Asia with distinct seasonal characteristics could provide us with a better opportunity to solve the conundrum of the intertwined cloud-aerosol-precipitation interaction (CAPI) mechanisms.