Abstract

Since the early 2010s, anthropogenic aerosols have started decreasing in East Asia (EA) while have continued to increase in South Asia (SA). Yet the climate impacts of this Asian aerosol dipole (AAD) pattern remain largely unknown. Using a state-of-the-art climate model, we demonstrate that the c... Show moreSince the early 2010s, anthropogenic aerosols have started decreasing in East Asia (EA) while have continued to increase in South Asia (SA). Yet the climate impacts of this Asian aerosol dipole (AAD) pattern remain largely unknown. Using a state-of-the-art climate model, we demonstrate that the climate response is distinctly different between the SA aerosol increases and EA aerosol decreases. The SA aerosol increases lead to similar to 2.7 times stronger land summer precipitation change within the forced regions than the EA aerosol decreases. Contrastingly, the SA aerosol increases, within the tropical monsoon regime, produce weak and tropically confined responses, while the EA aerosol decreases yield a pronounced northern hemisphere warming aided by extratropical mean westerly and positive air-sea feedbacks over the western North Pacific. By scaling the observed instantaneous shortwave radiative forcing, we reveal that the recent AAD induces a pronounced northern hemisphere extratropical (beyond 30 degrees N) warming (0.024 +/- 0.010 degrees C decade(-1)), particularly over Europe (0.049 +/- 0.009 degrees C decade(-1)). These findings highlight the importance of the pattern effect of forcings in driving global climate and have important implications for decadal prediction. Show less