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Satellite studies of aerosol-cloud interactions usually make use of retrievals of both aerosol and cloud properties, but these retrievals are rarely spatially co-located. While it is possible to retrieve aerosol properties above clouds under certain circumstances, aerosol properties are usually only retrieved in cloud-free scenes. Generally, the smaller spatial variability of aerosols compared to clouds reduces the importance of this sampling difference. However, as precipitation generates an increase in spatial variability of aerosols, the imperfect co-location of aerosol and cloud property retrievals may lead to changes in observed aerosol-cloud-precipitation relationships in precipitating environments. In this work, we use a regional-scale model, satellite observations and reanalysis data to investigate how the noncoincidence of aerosol, cloud and precipitation retrievals affects correlations between them. We show that the difference in the aerosol optical depth (AOD)-precipitation relationship between general circulation models (GCMs) and satellite observations can be explained by the wet scavenging of aerosol. Using observations of the development of precipitation from cloud regimes, we show how the influence of wet scavenging can obscure possible aerosol influences on precipitation from convective clouds. This obscuring of aerosol-cloud- precipitation interactions by wet scavenging suggests that even if GCMs contained a perfect representation of aerosol influences on convective clouds, the difficulty of separating the "clear-sky" aerosol from the "all-sky" aerosol in GCMs may prevent them from reproducing the correlations seen in satellite data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theories have been proposed detailing how aerosols might impact precipitation, predicting both increases and decreases depending on the prevailing meteorological conditions and aerosol type. In convective clouds, increased aerosol concentrations have been speculated to invigorate convective activity. Previous studies have shown large increases in precipitation with increasing aerosol optical depth, concluding an aerosol effect on precipitation. Our analysis reveals that these studies may have been influenced by cloud effects on the retrieved aerosol, as well as by meteorological covariations. We use a regime-based approach to separate out different cloud regimes, allowing the study of aerosol-cloud interactions in individual cloud regimes. We account for the influence of cloud properties on the aerosol retrieval and make use of the diurnal sampling of the TRMM satellite and the TRMM merged precipitation product to investigate the precipitation development. We find that whilst there is little effect on precipitation at the time of the aerosol retrieval, there is an increase in precipitation from cloud in high aerosol environments in the 6 h after the aerosol retrieval, consistent with the invigoration hypothesis. Increases in lightning flash count with increased aerosol are also observed in this period. The invigoration effect appears to be dependent on the cloud top temperature, with clouds with tops colder than 0 C showing increases in precipitation at times after the retrieval as well as increases in wet scavenging. Warm clouds show little change in precipitation development with increasing aerosol, suggesting ice processes are important for the invigoration of precipitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]