EGU25-10796, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-10796
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Convective clouds over the Amazon rainforest – aerosol dependence and microphysical features
Mira L. Pöhlker1,2,3, Baseerat Romshoo1,2, Oliver Lauer2, Jyothirbindu Maddali4, Philipp Liznerski4, Alice Henkes3, Johannes Quaas3, Patric Seifert1, Tom Gaudek1, Bruno Meller5, Subha Raj2, Luiz Machado2,5, Micael Cecchini5, Rachel Albrecht5, Samira Atabakhsh1, Paulo Artaxo5, Yifan Yang1, Arun Babu Suja1, Maris Kloft4, and Christopher Pöhlker2
Mira L. Pöhlker et al.
  • 1Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Atmospheric Microphysics, Leipzig, Germany (poehlker@tropos.de)
  • 2Multiphase Chemistry Department, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, 55128, Mainz, Germany
  • 3Faculty of Physics and Earth Sciences, Leipzig Institute for Meteorology, Leipzig University, Germany
  • 4Department of Computer Science, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67653 Kaiserslautern, Germany
  • 5Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

The Amazon rainforest plays an important role in global climate systems, particularly in regional precipitation patterns, atmospheric circulation, and Earth's energy balance. Convective systems in this region are intricately linked to these broader climatic processes. Through a combination of ground-based, satellite, and aircraft observations, we find that Amazonian convective clouds are particularly sensitive to aerosol concentrations, being highly aerosol-limited. This study explores the relationship between cloud droplet concentrations and ambient aerosol particles, both within the Amazon and in broader regions, evaluating various parameterizations commonly used in global climate models. Machine learning methods were used to capture the relationships between various aerosol, cloud, and meteorological parameters in the Amazon rainforest. To gain deeper insight into the microphysical processes within individual clouds, we examine the evolution of the cloud droplet effective radius (rₑ) as a function of cloud temperature (T), looking into the vertical structure of deep convective cumulus clouds. 

How to cite: Pöhlker, M. L., Romshoo, B., Lauer, O., Maddali, J., Liznerski, P., Henkes, A., Quaas, J., Seifert, P., Gaudek, T., Meller, B., Raj, S., Machado, L., Cecchini, M., Albrecht, R., Atabakhsh, S., Artaxo, P., Yang, Y., Babu Suja, A., Kloft, M., and Pöhlker, C.: Convective clouds over the Amazon rainforest – aerosol dependence and microphysical features, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-10796, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-10796, 2025.