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Risser, Mark D., Collins, William D. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4463-9848, Wehner, Michael F., O’Brien, Travis A., Huang, Huanping and Ullrich, Paul A.
(2024)
Anthropogenic aerosols mask increases in US rainfall by greenhouse gases.
Nature Communications, 15 (1).
ISSN 2041-1723
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Abstract
A comprehensive understanding of human-induced changes to rainfall is essential for water resource management and infrastructure design. However, at regional scales, existing detection and attribution studies are rarely able to conclusively identify human influence on precipitation. Here we show that anthropogenic aerosol and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the primary drivers of precipitation change over the United States. GHG emissions increase mean and extreme precipitation from rain gauge measurements across all seasons, while the decadal-scale effect of global aerosol emissions decreases precipitation. Local aerosol emissions further offset GHG increases in the winter and spring but enhance rainfall during the summer and fall. Our results show that the conflicting literature on historical precipitation trends can be explained by offsetting aerosol and greenhouse gas signals. At the scale of the United States, individual climate models reproduce observed changes but cannot confidently determine whether a given anthropogenic agent has increased or decreased rainfall.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data availability: All global climate data analyzed in this study are available in the Earth System Grid Federation repository, accessible at https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/esgf-llnl/. The in situ precipitation records supporting this article are based on publicly available measurements from the National Centers for Environmental Information (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/global-historical-climatology-network-daily). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | general chemistry,general biochemistry,genetics and molecular biology,general,general physics and astronomy,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1600/1600 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jul 2026 16:04 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2026 05:50 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103932 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-024-45504-8 |
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