New research suggests that air pollution indirectly reduces the amount of rainfall in northern Taiwan during autumn, which might have exacerbated the water shortage at New Taipei City’s Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫).
Researchers from National Central University (NCU) and the State University of New York at Albany analyzed 13 years of satellite and surface data for the study, which was published on March 23 in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Taiwan receives most of its annual rainfall from May to September during the plum rain and typhoon seasons, NCU Department of Atmospheric Sciences associate professor Wang Sheng-hsiang (王聖翔) said.
Photo courtesy of National Central University
Although there is relatively less rainfall during fall and winter, it is key to maintaining reservoir levels, Wang said.
However, it is also when pollution tends to be most severe, which not only affects health, but can also affect the characteristics of rain droplets, he added.
Researchers analyzed data from 2005 to 2017 on concentrations of PM2.5 — airborne particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers — meteorological parameters, such as wind direction and temperature, raindrop size, aerosols and cloud properties, to determine the effect that aerosols might have on clouds and drizzle during autumn over northern Taiwan.
They found that in the densely industrialized northwest, the season is mainly dominated by warm, thin and broken clouds, which are defined as having an internal temperature of at least 0°C.
Aerosols were discovered to have an indirect effect on the clouds, meaning that as aerosol concentrations rose, cloud droplets became smaller and more numerous, with drizzles occurring less frequently.
The data also reflected this, as “polluted” days saw about 6.8mm less daily average rainfall than “clean” days, with polluted days defined as the 80th percentile of daily average PM2.5, while clean days fell in the 20th percentile.
Lead author of the study, Chen Ying-chieh (陳映潔), obtained a graduate degree from NCU’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
As a graduate student, she was in the first cohort of the US-Taiwan Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE), which sent her on a two-month exchange to the US.
PIRE is run by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the US National Science Foundation through NCU and the State University of New York at Albany. The program aims to promote research collaboration on weather and climate prediction, and emergency response strategies.
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
RSS