Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177

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Atmospheric Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosres

Aerosol impacts on summer precipitation forecast over the North China

Plain by using Thompson aerosol-aware scheme in WRF: Statistical analysis
and significant threat score improvements in polluted condition during
June to August 2018
Chunwei Guo a, Dan Chen a, *, 1, Min Chen a, *, Shuting Zhang a, Jianping Guo b, Zhanshan Ma c
a
Institute of Urban Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100089, China
b
State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China
c
Earth System Modeling and Prediction Centre, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The North China Plain (NCP) is one of the most polluted areas in China, and the impacts of such high-levels of
Aerosol-aware scheme aerosols on clouds and precipitation remain an interesting issue with great uncertainties. From the perspective of
Statistical analysis regional numerical weather prediction, how to consider the role of aerosols is still a controversial issue
TS scores
considering the balance between the complexities/uncertainties of the model (aerosol-radiation-cloud in­
Polluted-precipitation cases
teractions) and computational costs. To evaluate the reliability of the Thompson aerosol-aware schemes and
promote operational applications in the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF), summer precipitation
forecast with three experiments that considered no aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions (Thomp), aerosol-cloud
interactions only (ThompAI) and full aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions (ThompAD) from June to August 2018
were carried out. Detailed statistics of the 3-h and 24-h cumulative precipitation skills were calculated for two
groups, which included the entire summer season and selected polluted-precipitation events (26 days) only, were
analyzed. The results showed that the overall Threat Scores (TS) for the 26 polluted-precipitation events were
lower than those of the other group (the whole summer season)for either Thomp, ThompAI or ThompAD, which
revealed that the forecasting abilities for polluted-precipitation cases in the model were obviously lower than
those for the nonpolluted precipitation cases, indicating deficiencies in parameterizing the special conditions on
polluted days. Nevertheless, for both groups, after using the aerosol-aware Thompson schemes (either ThompAI
or ThompAD), the TS scores for most magnitudes (0.1, 1, 5, 10, and 25 mm) were significantly increased
compared to the original Thomp experiment, with the exception being for precipitation amounts >50 mm.
Meanwhile the BIAS of each magnitude also increased for both ThompAI and ThompAD due to the spatial in­
crease in areas with precipitation compared to the original Thomp experiment. The TS improvements were more
significant in the ThompAD experiment than in the ThompAI experiment. Compared with the original Thomp
experiment, the ThompAD improvement ratios for the 24-h cumulative precipitation TSs were 3.01%, 4.91%,
2.05%, 13.58%, 7.80% for 0.1 mm, 1 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm, 25 mm precipitation magnitudes respectively; and the
improvements were significantly higher when the statistics window was changed from 24-h to 3-h, with 3-h
cumulative precipitation TS improvements reaching 10.23%, 5.09%, 11.50%, 17.4%, 14.30%, respectively,
indicating the impacts that considering aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions in changing the precipitation pat­
terns (fall zone and amounts) in the model were more effective for 3-h windows compared to 24-h windows. Case
studies of selected light-rain, medium-scale rain and heavy rain events further revealed the positive impacts of
the Thompson aerosol-aware schemes, and the precipitated areas were much closer to the observations. The
reason why ThompAD did not show obvious advantages for large-scale precipitation (50 mm magnitude) may be
due to the complex relationship involving aerosol-cold cloud interactions in the model and the randomness
caused by inadequate an individual number of cases. The statistics for positive precipitation forecast skill

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: dchen@ium.cn, dchen@ccetp.cn (D. Chen), mchen@ium.cn (M. Chen).
1
Current address: Institute of Energy, Peking University, Beijing 100091, China.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2023.107177
Received 26 September 2023; Received in revised form 21 November 2023; Accepted 9 December 2023
Available online 12 December 2023
0169-8095/© 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V.
C. Guo et al.
improvements for the NCP region provide confidence in the application of the Thompson aerosol-aware scheme
in the WRF model in the future.
1. Introduction
Cloud microphysical processes are one of the most important non-
adiabatic heating physical processes in mesoscale numerical models
(Chen et al., 2004) for determining precipitation. Studies have shown
that accurate expressions of cloud microphysical processes would be an
enormous challenge, even more difficult than improving model grid
resolutions (Roh and Satoh, 2014; Fan et al., 2016). Aerosol-cloud-
interactions are a very important aspect of cloud microphysics pro­
cesses which also cause precipitation redistributions at both the global
climate and regional meteorology scales. Although there has been much
research on the response-chain of aerosol-cloud-precipitation, contro­
versial conclusions based on purely observational data have been drawn
that aerosols can suppress and invigorate precipitation under different
circumstances (Rosenfeld, 1999; Shepherd and Burian, 2003; Koren
et al., 2005; Lin et al., 2006; Yuan et al., 2008; Bell et al., 2009; Altaratz
et al., 2014; Storer et al., 2014; Jiang et al., 2018; Khatri et al., 2022).
Various conceptual models have been developed to describe the com­
plexities of the interaction paths between aerosols and cloud micro­
physics. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (IPCC,
2013) clearly states that cloud physical processes and their feedback
mechanisms are the largest contributors to uncertainty in numerical
model forecasting (Houghton et al., 2001; Yin et al., 2014), while
aerosol-cloud interactions through cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)/ice
nuclei (IN) size and number concentrations are one of the most uncer­
tain factors in climate modeling.
Cloud microphysical schemes considering aerosol effects were
developed with significant simplifications and first applied in climate
modeling only. Initially, a simple empirical relationship between the
number of cloud droplets and the mass or quantity of aerosols was used
with the disadvantage that the size/composition of cloud droplets and
relevant physical processes (such as updrafts) were not considered
(Jones and Slingo, 1996; Menon et al., 2002). Due to the influence of
particle size distributions and chemical compositions in aerosol activa­
tion, the calculations of the CCN concentration vary greatly. Ghan et al.
(1993) developed a physics-based parametric scheme that enables the
rapid calculation of CCN concentrations. In recent studies (Shen et al.,
2019), CCN concentrations were obtained from the size distributions of
particles, and the relationships between CCN number concentrations
and optical properties (e.g., backscatter coefficient, Angstrom scattering
index, and total extinction scattering coefficient) were established. For
IN, in Meyers et al. (1992), an empirical calculation formula was
established based on a continuous flow diffusion chamber, and this
empirical relationship is currently widely used by various models.
DeMott et al. (2010) proposed a parametric scheme for calculating IN
concentrations based on aerosol type, that considers the influence of
environmental conditions, which is currently the most commonly used
method.
In regional-scale numerical simulations, an increasing number of
scientific studies aiming to investigate the impacts of aerosols on clouds
and precipitation have recently been conducted (Cui et al., 2011; Khain
et al., 2011; Seifert et al., 2012; Guo et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2017; Guo
et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2022);
however, operational applications in numerical weather forecast have
not yet been widely considered. Two important reasons that hinder the
consideration of aerosol-cloud interactions in operational numerical
weather prediction systems (NWP) are: (1) the balance of uncertainties
of the aerosol-cloud interaction path and the uncertainties of micro­
physics itself; (2) the balance of the complexity/computational expenses
and the improvement in precipitation forecast skills. According to case-
by-case scientific studies under different aerosol background
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Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177
concentrations and cloud/precipitation systems by using different
modeling/schemes, conclusions of aerosol invigorating and suppressing
precipitation were both drawn, even at different stages of a single pre­
cipitation event or different types/scales of precipitation. For example,
in Guo et al. (2013), a summer convective precipitation case in Beijing
was simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting model
coupled with Chemistry model (WRF-Chem), and the results showed
that the increase in urban aerosol concentrations increased the regional
average precipitation, which had an enhancing effect on heavy precip­
itation but inhibited weak precipitation. Feng et al. (2023) reported that
dust particles can increase extreme precipitation by promoting the for­
mation of ice clouds and enhancing convections in North China. Fan
et al. (2014) studied the effects of CCN and IN on precipitation using a
binning microphysics scheme in WRF mode. The results show that when
the IN concentration is high, the increased CCN concentration increases
precipitation, while when the IN concentration is low, the increased
CCN concentration decreases precipitation, and because the IN con­
centration affects the efficiency of the ice-phase process. To obtain
confidence to promote operational applications in numerical weather
forecast, two essential conditions are required: (1) a balance of the
system complexities and computational costs; (2) statistical analysis and
overall forecast improvement.
As North China Plain (NCP) is one of the most polluted areas in China
and also in the world, the operational applications considering aerosol
impacts on clouds and precipitation in numerical weather forecast are
much more urgent than in other relatively cleaner regions, given the
evidence of significant precipitation changes caused by aerosols from
adequate scientific case studies. In an effort to address this issue, we
conducted a four-year joint project called “Aerosol-cloud-precipitation
interaction mechanism and regional modeling application in North
China Plain”. To obtain reliability, WRF considering aerosol impacts in
cloud microphysics was used, and solid improvement in precipitation
forecast skills in polluted conditions in June–August 2018 were
demonstrated.
We summarized our analysis and statistics by using the Thompson
aerosol-aware scheme in WRF, as this scheme incorporates the latest
updates and shows a good balance between computational expenses and
system complexity. A three-month statistics of precipitation forecast
skills were obtained to verify its capability over a long period, and the
results were summarized in this paper.
The paper is organized as follows. The experimental design is pro­
vided in Section 2: three simulations were conducted: namely one that
did not consider aerosol information by using the Thompson scheme
(Thomp), one that considered aerosol-cloud interaction only by using
the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme (ThompAI) and one that consid­
ered full aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions by using the aerosol-aware
Thompson scheme (ThompAD). The statistical results (in terms of the
overall Threat Score (TS) for different precipitation thresholds) are
given in Section 3. To clearly show the improvements, the statistics in
Section 3 were conducted for two groups, namely, the whole summer
days and selected polluted-precipitation days. As controversial conclu­
sions were drawn from several different case studies, it is important to
verify the model capabilities and stability under different cases, which
are given in Section 4. The discussion and summary are given in Section
5.
2. Experimental design and Thompson schemes
2.1. Experimental design
In this paper, the WRF model was used. The model domain is shown
C. Guo et al.
in Fig. 1, including most of North China, with a horizontal resolution of
3 km, 550 × 424 grid points in the horizontal direction and 59 vertical
layers (model top at 10 hPa). The simulation period is from 08:00 on
June 1, 2018, to 08:00 on September 1, 2018 (BJT, Beijing time). At
08:00 BJT every day, the global fine-grid forecasting products of the
European Numerical Weather Prediction Centre (ECMWF) (including
pressure layer data of 0.25◦ , and 4 layers soil temperature and humidity
data of 0.125◦ ) were used as the initial conditions and lateral boundary
conditions for 24-h forecast. The main physical schemes include the
Yonsei University (YSU) boundary layer scheme (Hong et al., 2006), the
Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for General Circulation Models
(RRTMG) longwave and shortwave radiation scheme (Iacono et al.,
2008), the National Center for Environmental Prediction, Oregon State
University, Air Force, and Hydrologic Research Lab’s (NOAH) land-
surface module (Chen and Dudhia, 2001; Ek et al., 2003), and the
cloud radiation option selected as 3.
In addition to aerosol-cloud interactions, it is still interesting to
investigate the overall changes with the additional aerosol-radiation
interactions for these long period statistics, since solid scientific evi­
dences show that aerosol-radiation interactions lead to atmosphere
thermodynamic parameter changes that may cause/trigger certain
sensitive conditions reaching rainfall threshold (Fan et al., 2008; Ghan
et al., 2012; Huang et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2017). For this reason, to
conduct the overall forecast performance statistics in this study, the
other option in the Thompson scheme that considers the full aerosol-
radiation-cloud interaction is also tested. Three sets of experiments are
designed: the control case (denoted as Thomp) uses Thompson scheme
without considering aerosol information, and the other two cases
consider aerosol-cloud interactions only (denoted as the ThompAI) and
full aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions (denoted as the ThompAD)
Fig. 1. Simulation domain and terrain height (Units: meters).
(BJ: Beijing, TJ: Tianjin, HB: Hebei, SX: Shanxi, SAX: Shaanxi, SD: Shandong, NM: Inner Mongolia, GS: Gansu, and NX: Ningxia).
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Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177
using the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme.
The Thompson aerosol-aware scheme (Thompson and Eidhammer,
2014) optimizes and improved on the original Thompson scheme
(Thompson et al., 2008) by adding the effect of aerosols in a simple and
low-consumption method that allows aerosol information to be read.
The original Thompson et al. (2008) has a total of 5 types of hydrome­
teor particles, namely, cloud water, rainwater, graupel, snow, and ice
crystals. To reduce computational costs, previous versions used one-
parameter forecasting for cloud water, snow and graupel (only pre­
dicted mass concentrations), but dual-parameter forecasting (mass
concentrations and number concentrations) for cloud ice and rainwater;
the number concentrations of cloud water, snowflakes and graupel was
deteremined based on mass concentration and size distribution as­
sumptions. The Thompson aerosol-aware scheme incorporates the pro­
cess of cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei so that the
concentrations of cloud droplets, snow, and graupel are also predicted.
The aerosols in the scheme are distinguished by “water-friendly aerosol”
(Nwfa) and “ice-friendly aerosol” (Nifa). Hydrophilic aerosols are a
combination of sulfates, sea salts and organic matter. Ice-friendly
aerosols are based on a sand dust aerosol number concentration of
0.5 μm, as this kind of dust is very active and is ubiquitous in the at­
mosphere (DeMott et al., 2003; Richardson et al., 2007; Hoose et al.,
2010; Murray et al., 2012). The nucleation of dust particles into ice
crystals as described by DeMott et al. (2010) is used. The scheme cal­
culations are different according to the supersaturation status: when
supersaturation is reached, condensation and then infiltrating freezing
process is calculated, and when supersaturation is not reached, desu­
blimation process is calculated. The aerosol information used in the
aerosol-aware scheme here is derived from Colarco et al. (2010) Aerosol
climate field data with a resolution of 0.5◦ × 1.25◦ simulated by the
C. Guo et al.
2001–2007 Global Model GOCART (Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radi­
ation and Transport).
2.2. Observed precipitation data and statistical method
The observation data used in this study consist of the cumulative
precipitation values that were obtained by >700 automatic stations in
North China for 3-h and 24-h periods. At the same time, to quantitatively
evaluate the performance of the numerical forecast, the predicted values
of the grid point features produced by the model are interpolated to the
observation stations by using bilinear interpolation method, and the
statistical analysis and comparisons with the observation values are
carried out. The statistical analysis of precipitation forecast skills
include TS (threat score) score, BIAS (bias score) score, POD (probability
of detection), and FAR (false alarm ratio), and the calculation formulas
for each variable are as follows:
TS = NA/(NA + NB + NC) (1)
BIAS = (NA + NB)/(NA + NC) (2)
POD = NA/(NA + NC) (3)
FAR = NB/(NA + NB) (4)
where NA, NB, and NC indicate the number of stations with accurate
precipitation forecasts (Hit), false alarms, and missing data, respec­
tively. The TS score indicates the accuracy of the forecast; its value is
between 0 and 1, and the higher the score is, the better the forecast. BIAS
indicates the forecast relative to the observed precipitation range; bias
value >1 indicates overall false alarms for precipitation, and the larger
the value is, the more serious the precipitation overestimation; bias
value <1 indicates overall missing precipitation, and the smaller the
value is, the more serious the precipitation underestimation. POD is used
to characterize the proportion of the forecast precipitation area in the
actual precipitation area, and the higher the value is, the better the
forecast skill. FAR is the false alarm rate for the mode.
Different levels of precipitation intensity in this study are selected
from the general threshold, namely, 0.1 mm, 10 mm, 25 mm, 50 mm,
and 100 mm, representing the thresholds of light rain, moderate rain,
heavy rain, rainstorm and extraordinarily heavy rainstorm, respectively.
When calculating the TS and BIAS scores, precipitation greater than or
equal to these thresholds are counted in the score of the threshold.
3. Effects of aerosols on precipitation forecast
3.1. Statistics for the entire summer season
To quantitatively compare the forecast effects of the three tests, the
TS and BIAS scores for the cumulative precipitation in June–August
2018 for 3 h and 24 h are calculated here. Fig. 2 shows the TS and BIAS
scores for the three tests of the 3 h cumulative precipitation. For pre­
cipitation in the range of 0.1 mm and 1 mm, after using the aerosol-
aware Thompson scheme and regardless of whether the aerosol-
radiation interaction is considered, the precipitation TS scores are
significantly improved at all times compared with the Thompson
scheme, and the BIAS is also significantly increased (over 1), indicating
that the precipitation forecast skill increases. At the same time, that
indicates that the prediction effect is better in terms of whether it rains
or not in the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme. The Thomp test has a
certain tendency to miss precipitation forecast at 0.1 mm and 1 mm,
resulting in a BIAS of <1 at some times, and the ThompAI and ThompAD
tests can better compensate for the missing precipitation forecast of the
Thomp test. For 5 mm, 10 mm, 25 mm precipitation, the ThompAI and
ThompAD tests were mostly improved compared to the TS scores of the
Thomp test, and the BIAS also increased significantly. For precipitation
in the 50 mm range, the ThompAI and ThompAD tests did not
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Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177
significantly improve compared to the Thomp test, but the BIAS
increased significantly, indicating that the false alarms of precipitation
occur even more widely in terms of spatial distribution. Table 1 calcu­
lates the average TS score for the 3-h cumulative precipitation in the
three months. In general, the TS score of 0.1 mm precipitation after
using aerosol-aware Thompson scheme can be improved by >8%
compared with the Thomp test, and the ThompAD test is higher; for the
TS scores of 1 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm, and 25 mm magnitude precipitation,
there are 1%–6% of improvements with different degrees; and for 50
mm precipitation, due to the low frequency of such a large amount of
precipitation, the strong randomness, and the complex mechanism of
action of the aerosol-cold cloud process, the ThompAI and ThompAD
tests did not have higher TS scores than the Thomp test, indicating the
inclusion of aerosols even had a negative effect on 50 mm precipitation.
As seen from the 24-h cumulative precipitation scores of the three
tests (Fig. 3 and Table 2), for precipitation amounts below 50 mm, the TS
scores of ThompAI and ThompAD tests were significantly higher than
the Thomp test, and the TS scores of ThompAD (aerosol-radiation-cloud
interaction) test were slightly higher than those of ThompAI (aerosol-
cloud interaction only) test, especially that the TS scores of the 10 mm
and 25 mm magnitude precipitation could increase by approximately
5–10%. After considering aerosol effect, the BIAS for each precipitation
level is significantly higher than that of the experiment without
considering the aerosol effect, indicating that the overall precipitated
area become larger with a wider spatial distribution, and the added
consideration of aerosol-radiation interactions helps to further increase
the precipitation forecast skill in the statistical time window of 24 h.
Similar to the 3-h cumulative precipitation, for precipitation above 50
mm, due to the small number of precipitation cases and sites, the
randomness is relatively strong, so the TS score does not have a signif­
icant meaningful change. Table 2 shows the more detailed average
precipitation statistics for the three sets of experiments, of which HIT/
MISSIING/FALSE ALARM indicate the number of sites under three
different conditions, namely, HIT-precipitation observed and model
predicted to also have precipitation; MISSING-precipitation observed,
but not reported in the forecast; FALSE ALARM -no precipitation
observed, but the model predicted precipitation. Regardless of the pre­
cipitation magnitude, the ThompAI and ThompAD tests have signifi­
cantly increased the number of HIT sites compared to the Thomp test,
especially for 0.1 mm precipitation, and the number of HIT can increase
by approximately 20 sites; in addition to the precipitation of 10 mm, the
HIT number in the ThompAD test is greater than that in the ThompAI
test, which is exactly the reason for the significant increase in the TS
score. Correspondingly, the number of MISSING sites in the ThompAI
and ThompAD tests decreased significantly compared to the Thomp test,
and the number of FALSE ALARM sites increased due to the increase in
the precipitated areas spatially for various magnitudes.
3.2. Statistics of 26 polluted-precipitation events in the Beijing-Tianjin-
Hebei region
The pollution level in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is relatively
high compared to those in other regions in China, which means that the
background concentrations of aerosols in the region are relatively higher
than those in other regions. For this region, pollution events frequently
occur. Thus, it is interesting to analyze the impact of aerosols on pre­
cipitation under polluted conditions. After screening the summer pre­
cipitation cases from June to August 2018, 26 typical polluted-
precipitation cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region were selected,
and the screening criteria for polluted-precipitation cases were that the
daily-average PM2.5 concentrations were >50 μg m− 3 on that day.
Description of the 26 cases can be seen in Appendix A.
The TS scores of 24-h cumulative precipitation for the 26 polluted-
precipitation cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region by different
magnitudes are shown in Fig. 4. For 26 polluted-precipitation cases, in
most cases, the TS scores of the ThompAI and ThompAD tests were
C. Guo et al. Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177

Fig. 2. Averaged TS (Left) and BIAS (Right) of 3-h cumulative precipitation for June to August 2018.

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Table 1 significantly higher than that of the Thomp test. However, when the
Averaged TS of 3-h cumulative precipitation at different magnitudes for June to precipitation level was >25 mm, due to the relatively small number of
August 2018 and the improvement ratios compared with Thomp experiment. individual cases and more complicated interactions between aerosols
TS 0.1 mm 1 mm 5 mm 10 mm 25 mm 50 mm and cold clouds or mixed-phase clouds, some cases had a decreased TS
Thomp 0.2219 0.1659 0.1020 0.0704 0.0344 0.019
score compared to the Thomp test, indicating that the interaction path
ThompAI 0.2406 0.1745 0.1031 0.0753 0.0368 0.017 parameterized in these circumstances (precipitation larger than 25 mm)
Promotion(%) 8.45% 5.16% 1.08% 6.89% 6.89% − 12.40% are not helpful to improve the forecast skill in the model.
ThompAD 0.2411 0.1727 0.1028 0.0752 0.036 0.0176 The statistics of Table 3 and Table 4 show that for either 3 h or 24 h of
Promotion(%) 8.65% 4.08% 0.85% 6.73% 5.54% − 9.31%
cumulative precipitation, the overall TS scores of the 26 polluted-
precipitation cases selected in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei are lower than the
results of the entire summer test in simulation domain in June to August

Fig. 3. TS, BIAS, POD and FAR for 24-h cumulative precipitation for June to August 2018.

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Table 2
Details of the TS calculation (HIT, MISSING, FARSE ALARM, TS, BIAS) and improvement ratios for the 24-h cumulative precipitation for June to August 2018.
Threshold Test name HIT MISSING FALSE ALARM TS BIAS TS promotion rate

June–August in 2018
0.1 mm Thomp 154.2 83.0 66.6 0.516 1.15
ThompAI 172.7 64.5 91.8 0.531 1.42 2.84%
ThompAD 174.1 64.9 90.4 0.539 1.42 4.41%
1.0 mm Thomp 91.4 81.4 41.3 0.444 0.996
ThompAI 100.8 72.0 51.4 0.458 1.14 3.03%
ThompAD 101.5 72.7 51.6 0.466 1.17 4.81%
5.0 mm Thomp 45.8 61.2 25.6 0.335 1.00
ThompAI 49.8 57.2 32.1 0.332 1.24 0.92%
ThompAD 50.3 57.8 31.4 0.346 1.21 3.24%
10.0 mm Thomp 27.8 46.1 18.6 0.282 0.88
ThompAI 30.6 43.3 23.5 0.300 1.25 4.97%
ThompAD 31.0 43.8 22.9 0.301 1.26 6.89%
25.0 mm Thomp 9.4 22.0 10.5 0.220 1.33
ThompAI 10.7 20.7 12.9 0.227 1.83 2.98%
ThompAD 10.6 21.2 13.0 0.244 1.73 10.89%
50.0 mm Thomp 2.8 8.3 4.3 0.184 1.88
ThompAI 3.1 8.0 5.5 0.197 2.80 7.25%
ThompAD 3.0 8.3 5.6 0.155 2.72 − 15.7%

Fig. 4. Averaged TS scores for the 24-h cumulative precipitation for 26 polluted events by precipitation magnitude.

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Table 3 concentration in the Beijing area was 55 μg m− 3. Precipitated areas with

Averaged TS scores for the 24-h cumulative precipitation for 26 polluted events 0.1–10 mm/24 h in the three tests were slightly smaller than the ob­
by precipitation magnitudes and improvement ratios compared with the Thomp servations, indicating some limitations of the threshold values/criteria
experiment. to determine cloud-to-rain autoconversion in the model. In the Thomp
TS scores 0.1 1 mm 5 mm 10 mm 25 mm 50 mm test, the precipitation range of 0.1–10 mm was smaller than observed,
mm especially in the northern and southern Shanxi and north-central
Thomp 0.4973 0.4010 0.2838 0.2233 0.1779 0.1524 Shandong (Fig. 5b). When using the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme,
ThompAI 0.5098 0.4204 0.2802 0.2372 0.1731 0.1626 the precipitation range for small rain in Shanxi and Shandong increased
Promotion 2.51% 4.84% − 1.29% 6.21% − 2.71% 6.67% significantly (red boxes in Fig. 5), and small precipitation peaks >10 mm
(%)
ThompAD 0.5123 0.4207 0.2896 0.2536 0.1918 0.1375
appeared in the Shanxi area, closer to the observations (Fig. 5c, d).
Promotion 3.01% 4.91% 2.05% 13.58% 7.80% − 35.94% Consistent with the statistical TS results for 0.1–1 mm magnitude, for
(%) 24-h cumulative precipitation TS scores, the Thomp, ThompAI and
ThompAD test performances are 0.16, 0.161 and 0.164, respectively for
scale of 0.1 mm and 0.1, 0.138 and 0.1361, respectively, for scale of 1
Table 4 mm, indicating that the precipitation forecasting was improved after
Averaged TS scores for the 3-h cumulative precipitation for 26 polluted events using the cloud microphysical parameterization scheme containing
by precipitation magnitude. aerosol information for this light rain case. Spatially more precipitated
TS scores 0.1 mm 1 mm 5 mm 10 mm 25 mm 50 mm areas are clearly shown after considering aerosol impacts.

Thomp 0.1958 0.1409 0.0899 0.06519 0.0233 0.01385

ThompAI 0.2107 0.1475 0.0918 0.06955 0.0283 0.01071
Promotion 9.98% 5.26% 5.69% 9.11% 26.96%
(%)
ThompAD 0.2111 0.1476 0.09613 0.07543 0.0257 0.01191
Promotion 10.23% 5.09% 11.50% 17.4% 14.30%
(%)
2018 (Table 1 and Table 2) for the Thomp, ThompAI and ThompAD
tests, which indicates that the forecast ability for polluted-precipitation
cases in the model is obviously lower than for the nonpolluted precipi­
tation cases, which may be associated with the deficiencies in parame­
terizing the special conditions on polluted days.
Nevertheless, the forecast skill improvement ratios are relatively
higher for the 26 polluted cases than for the whole summer period from
Thomp to ThompAI and ThompAD. For statistics between 24-h and 3-h
forecasts, the 3-h statistics in the ThompAI and ThompAD experiments
show that forecast skill improvement is more significant than that of 24
h, indicating that the changes in precipitation fall zones and magnitudes
caused by aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions were more significant
within the 3-h window compared to those of 24-h window. The 3-h
precipitation TS scores in the ThompAD test increased by 10.23%,
5.09%, 11.50%, 17.40%, and 14.39% for the magnitudes of 0.1 mm, 1
mm, 5 mm, 10 mm, and 25 mm, respectively, with an average increase
of 11.7%. Precipitation above 50 mm showed different effects in each
experiment, possibly due to the complexity of the ice phase process, the
small number of cases and also strong randomness.
3.3. Analysis of selected light-rain, medium-scale rain and heavy rain
cases
It is difficult to conduct a thorough analysis for each case; thus,
statistics were conducted for the entire summer period and for the 26
polluted precipitation cases. To further investigate the changes in pre­
diction skill for different types of precipitation by considering aerosol
information in Thompson scheme, the comparative results of several
typical precipitation cases of light rainfall, small-medium precipitation,
and large-scale precipitation selected from 26 polluted precipitation
cases are given.
3.3.1.1. Light-rain precipitation process on August 1, 2018. The first
precipitation type chosen is light rainfall, and August 1, 2018 is selected
here as an example. From the observations, it is known that there was
light rain in most parts of North China, local showers or thunderstorms
in the Beijing area from evening to night (Fig. 5a), and the average PM2.5
3.3.1.2. Small-to-medium-scale precipitation process on June 16, 2018.
On June 16, 2018, precipitation occurred in most parts of North China,
and the average precipitation in Beijing was 3.2 mm (Fig. 6a), short-
term strong precipitation and strong winds occurred in many places
during thunderstorms, and the average PM2.5 concentration in Beijing
was 73 μg m− 3 on that day. The precipitation forecasts for the Thomp
test were similar to the observations, but the center of the stronger
precipitation in the Beijing area was shifted northward and weaker, and
the precipitation range in northern Ningxia and southern Shaanxi was
small (Fig. 6b). After using the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme, the
intensity in the stronger precipitation centers increased, and the area
reaching 0.1 mm precipitation in northern Ningxia and southern
Shaanxi increased and was closer to the observations (red boxes in
Fig. 6). In this case, improvements were achieved regardless of whether
aerosol-radiation interactions were considered (Fig. 6c, d). Fig. 7 shows
that the TS scores of the ThompAI and ThompAD tests are higher than
those of the Thomp test for each magnitude, and the ThompAD test with
full aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions performed better than Thom­
pAI (aerosol-cloud interaction only) test for 0.1–5 mm scale
precipitations.
3.3.1.3. Heavy precipitation process on July 16, 2018. The process on
July 16, 2018 is chosen. Here, the spatial precipitation distribution and
TS scores are given as an example of heavy precipitation case. Affected
by the warm and humid air flow in the south of the periphery of the
subtropical-high pressure system, from the night of July 15 to 06:00 on
the 18th of July 2018, heavy rain fell over wide areas of North China,
with local heavy rainstorms in certain small regions, and the precipi­
tation in those grids reached the scales of heavy rainstorm. From 08:00
on July 16 to 08:00 on July 17, the observed rain belt showed a
southwest-northeast trend, the 24-h cumulative precipitation in most
areas was >25 mm, and the precipitation center was located in central
Beijing (Fig. 8a). Compared with the observations, the locations of
strong rainfall belts >25 mm in Beijing in the three tests were shifted
toward the southwest, and the rainfall amounts were greater than
observation. Similarly, the rainfall amounts in central Shanxi were also
greater than observation. In our opinion, this is possibly due to the
limited capability of the model to accurately reproduce the actual
complex rainfall physical processes for the mountain ranges, especially
for cases of heavy rain. This might be relevant to the deficiency of dy­
namic schemes for complex terrain in the model. The Thomp
experiment-simulated heavy precipitation rain band is located north­
ward, and the precipitation intensity is stronger than the observation,
but the amount of small-scale precipitation is smaller than the obser­
vation (Fig. 8b). Both the ThompAI and ThompAD tests had stronger
precipitation ranges and intensities than the Thomp test, and the amount

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C. Guo et al. Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177

Fig. 5. Spatial distributions of 24-h cumulative precipitation amounts starting from 0800 BJT August 1 to 0800 BJT August 2. (a) Observation, (b) Thomp test, (c)
ThompAI test, and (d) ThompAD test. (Units:mm) (red boxes indicate the differences between the three tests and observation). (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

of small-scale precipitation was increased compared to the Thomp test
and was much closer to the observations (red boxes in Fig. 8). Fig. 9
shows the 24-h cumulative precipitation TS scores of the three tests at
various magnitudes, and it can be seen that for magnitude below 10 mm,
the ThompAI and ThompAD tests have higher TS scores because the
precipitation range is closer to the observation, while for magnitudes
above 10 mm, due to the complex relationship between aerosols and the
cold clouds associated with cold cloud precipitation, the use of aerosol-
aware scheme does not show particular advantages.
aerosol-aware cloud microphysical scheme that considers aerosol-
radiation-cloud interactions, thus providing suggestions for future
operational applications. Based on the WRF mesoscale model, the
summer precipitation forecast from June to August 2018 was carried
out, and three sets of experiments were designed: original Thompson
scheme (Thomp), aerosol-aware Thompson with aerosol-cloud in­
teractions considered (ThompAI) and aerosol-aware Thompson with full
aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions (ThompAD). The following con­
clusions are reached:

4. Discussion and conclusions
The North China Plain is one of the most polluted areas in China, and
there are still many uncertainties about the impacts of aerosols on clouds
and precipitation in this area. At present, although many case studies
show that precipitation forecast can be significantly affected by the high
background aerosol levels in this area, operational numerical forecast
models in the North China Plain still do not consider the impact of
aerosols. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively evaluate how
precipitation forecasts would be affected when using the Thompson
(1) According to the statistical results for the entire summer (June­
–August 2018), significant improvements in the overall TS scores
are achieved after using the aerosol-aware Thompson schemes for
both the 3-h and 24-h statistical time windows. For the 3-h cu­
mulative precipitation, the TS score of 0.1 mm precipitation can
be increased by >8%, and the TS scores of 1 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm,
and 25 mm precipitation amounts have different degrees of
improvement (ranging from 0.85%–6.89%). For 3-h cumulative
precipitation of 50 mm magnitude, due to the low frequency of
such large amount of precipitation, the number of individual

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C. Guo et al. Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177

Fig. 6. Spatial distributions of 24-h cumulative precipitation amount starting from 0800 BJT June 16 to 0800 BJT June 17. (a) Observation, (b) Thomp test, (c)
ThompAI test, and (d) ThompAD test. (Units: mm) (red boxes indicate the differences between the three tests and observation). (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 7. TS scores of 24-h cumulative precipitation for the forecast from 0800 BJT June 16 to 0800 BJT June 17.

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C. Guo et al. Atmospheric Research 299 (2024) 107177

Fig. 8. Spatial distributions of 24-h cumulative precipitation amount starting from 0800 BJT July 16 to 0800 BJT July 17. (a) Observation, (b) Thomp test, (c)
ThompAI test, (d) ThompAD test. (Units: mm) (red boxes indicate the differences between the three tests and observation). (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

significantly higher TS scores than the Thomp test (increased by

(2) 26 polluted-precipitation cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei re­
Fig. 9. TS scores of 24-h cumulative precipitation for the forecast from 0800
BJT July 16 to 0800 BJT July 17.
cases/samples is relatively low, and the mechanism of the
aerosol-cold cloud process interactions is more complex, so no
regular/consistent changes are evident. While extending the
statistical time window from 3 h to 24 h, for the 24-h cumulative
precipitation, the ThompAI and ThompAD tests still have
0.92–10.89%), and the TS scores of the ThompAD (aerosol-radi­
ation-cloud interactions) tests are slightly higher than that those
of the ThompAI test (aerosol-cloud interactions only). Specif­
ically, the improvement ratios of 24-h cumulative precipitation
TS scores for the 10 mm and 25 mm magnitude can reach 6.89%
and 10.89%, respectively. After including aerosol effects, the 24-
h precipitation BIAS for various magnitudes also significantly
increased, mainly due to the overall spatial increase in precipi­
tated areas.
gion were selected and separate statistics were conducted.
Compared to the whole summer (June–August) statistics for both
3 h or 24 h of cumulative precipitation, the overall TS scores of
the 26 polluted-precipitation cases selected in Beijing-Tianjin-
Hebei in three experiments (Thomp, ThompAI, ThompAD) are
all lower than the corresponding average results for the entire
summer period, which indicates that the forecast ability for the
polluted-precipitation cases in the model is obviously lower than
the average level which may be associated with the deficiencies

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in parameterizing the special conditions on polluted days. After
considering aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions based on orig­
inal Thompson scheme, the TS scores for 24-h cumulative pre­
cipitations at 0.1 mm, 1 mm, 5 mm, 10 mm, 25 mm magnitudes
increased by 3.01%, 4.91%, 2.05%, 13.58%, and 7.80% respec­
tively. Compared to the 24-h cumulative precipitation, the
improvement ratios of 3-h accumulative precipitation TS scores
are even higher, namely, 10.23%, 5.09%, 11.50%, 17.4%, and
14.30%, respectively, indicating more positive aerosol impacts
on the fall zone and rain amount in the 3-h time window
compared to the 24-h time window.
(3) Three selected cases representing light rain, small-to-medium
scale rain and heavy rain in polluted conditions were selected
and the 24-h precipitation spatial distributions and TS scores
were analyzed. Results show that for small-scale precipitation
(light rain) and small-to-medium scale precipitation, the in­
creases in the TS score for magnitudes below 10 mm after using
the aerosol-aware Thompson scheme are due to the improvement
of overall more reasonable spatial distribution of precipitated
areas which cover more widely and are closer to the observation.
For the heavy rainstorm precipitation case, the TS score below 10
mm is significantly higher after considering aerosol impacts, but
precipitation above 10 mm does not show obvious advantages
due to the complex relationship involving cold cloud precipita­
tion and the aerosol-mixed phase cloud interactions.
at the current stage. Therefore, to promote operational application, the
effect of aerosols on ice-phase clouds and the response chain of aerosol-
cloud-precipitation for large-magnitude precipitation need to be further
studied in the future.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Chunwei Guo: Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization,
Writing – original draft. Dan Chen: Conceptualization, Formal analysis,
Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Min
Chen: Funding acquisition, Supervision. Shuting Zhang: Methodology,
Visualization. Jianping Guo: Investigation, Methodology. Zhanshan
Ma: Investigation, Methodology.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgments

Overall, for North China, the precipitation prediction skills after
considering aerosol impacts using Thompson aerosol-aware schemes are
significantly increased. However, the impact on precipitation of larger
magnitudes (e.g. 50 mm) is more complex due to the interaction path
between aerosols and ice-phase clouds, so there is no obvious advantage
This research has been supported by the National Key Research and
Development Program of China (grant nos. 2017YFC1501406), the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42325501)
and the Science and Technology Project of Beijing Meteorological Bu­
reau (grant no. BMBKJ202004003).

Appendix A. Description of 26 polluted-precipitation events in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region

Case Number Case Time daily-average PM2.5 Concentration Weather State

(μg m− 3)

1 2018.6.11 58 scattered thundershowers,

2 2018.6.12 77 scattered thundershowers
3 2018.6.15 72 drizzle
4 2018.6.16 73 thundershowers, short-time heavy rain and gale
5 2018.6.18 72 thundershowers, short-time gale and small hail in the afternoon and night
6 2018.6.22 55 scattered showers
7 2018.6.23 50 scattered thundershowers
8 2018.6.25 73 showers
9 2018.6.26 110 scattered thunderstorms and strong convection
10 2018.7.4 52 local thunderstorm in the north
11 2018.7.5 61 thundershowers
12 2018.7.9 69 shower or thundershowers
13 2018.7.16 53 heavy rain,local torrential heavy rain
14 2018.7.18 74 medium-scale rain, local heavy rain
15 2018.7.19 62 thundershowers or showers
16 2018.7.20 71 scattered thundershowers or showers in the northeast
17 2018.7.21 61 scattered thundershowers
18 2018.7.29 65 drizzle
19 2018.7.30 64 showers
20 2018.7.31 56 drizzle
21 2018.8.1 52 local showers or thundershowers
22 2018.8.2 74 local weak showers
23 2018.8.7 55 heavy rainstorm and local torrential heavy rainstorm
24 2018.8.26 53 thundershowers in the north
25 2018.8.27 56 scattered showers
26 2018.8.28 53 scattered showers

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