A Modeling Investigation of the Potential Impacts of Pollution Aerosols on Hurricane Harvey

Abstract

We examine the potential role of aerosol pollution on the rainfall and intensity of hurricane Harvey. For this study, we use the global model, OLAM, with aerosol estimates from the global atmospheric chemistry model GEOS-Chem. Two sets of simulations of hurricane Harvey were performed. Simulations in the first set cover the intensification phase of Harvey until initial landfall in Texas and focus on the sensitivity of storm track and intensity, while simulations in the second set examine the sensitivity of storm track and precipitation during the period after initial landfall when record flooding occurred near Houston. During each period, simulations were performed with no anthropogenic sources of aerosol, with both natural and anthropogenic aerosol sources, and with both sources enhanced ten times.During the rapid intensification phase, the results indicate that aerosol amounts had very little impact on storm motion. Moreover, very little difference was found on the intensity of the simulated storm to aerosol amounts for the no-anthropogenic vs the GEOS-Chem estimated amounts with anthropogenic sources. However, when both natural and anthropogenic aerosol amounts were enhanced ten times, the simulated storm intensity was enhanced appreciably in terms of minimum sea-level pressure.During the second period of the simulation, through which Harvey remained a tropical storm, the main result was that very little sensitivity was found in precipitation or any other TC characteristic to aerosol concentrations. We cannot definitively state why the individual convective cells did not respond to high aerosol concentrations during this phase of the storm. However, the abundant precipitation in all three simulations scavenged the vast majority of aerosol as it flowed radially inward, and we speculate that this modulated the potential impact of aerosols on the inner TC and eyewallOverall, the simulated response of hurricane Harvey to aerosols was far less spectacular than what has been simulated in the past. We conclude that this is because hurricane Harvey was a strongly dynamically-driven storm system that as a result was relatively impervious to the effects of aerosols.