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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-3954</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Relative roles of aerosol size and hygroscopicity in modulating marine liquid-phase cloud responses under the winter monsoon</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Jianqi</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6647-282X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ma</surname>
<given-names>Xiaoyan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4485-8431</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Jia</surname>
<given-names>Hailing</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4741-588X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Tong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zou</surname>
<given-names>Peili</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ku</surname>
<given-names>Yingying</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>China Meteorological Administration Aerosol-Cloud and Precipitation Key Laboratory, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Niels Bohrweg 4, 2333 CA Leiden, the Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>28</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>29</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jianqi Zhao et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3954/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3954/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3954/egusphere-2026-3954.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-3954/egusphere-2026-3954.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>How aerosol physicochemical properties affect aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) and when these impacts are most pronounced represent an important source of ACI uncertainty. Targeting a representative liquid-phase cloud case over the Eastern China Ocean (ECO) under the winter monsoon featuring abundant meteorological, aerosol, and cloud variations, this study investigates the impacts of changes in aerosol size (volume-mean radius increased by 1.2 times and decreased by 45 %) and hygroscopicity (volume-mean hygroscopicity increased by 2.2 times and decreased by 62 %) using a spectral-bin cloud model. Results indicate that increased aerosol size and hygroscopicity generally enhance cloud development, raising the ECO-averaged cloud droplet number concentration (N&lt;sub&gt;d&lt;/sub&gt;) by 92 % and 53 %, respectively. These impacts peak under moderate aerosol concentrations (N&lt;sub&gt;a&lt;/sub&gt;) and cold advection, where N&lt;sub&gt;d&lt;/sub&gt; increases up to 10-fold. Concurrently, increased aerosol size raises cloud water by 1.3 times and extends cloud lifetime by 85 %, whereas increased hygroscopicity has a much weaker effect. By contrast, decreased aerosol size and hygroscopicity generally suppress cloud development, reducing the ECO-averaged N&lt;sub&gt;d&lt;/sub&gt; by 49 % and 43 %, respectively. The former has a relatively strong impact, which is most notable in moderate-to-high N&lt;sub&gt;a&lt;/sub&gt; environments under cold advection, reducing N&lt;sub&gt;d&lt;/sub&gt; and cloud water by over 80 % and 50 %, respectively. While changes in aerosol size generally exert a stronger overall impact than changes in hygroscopicity, specific conditions reveal the opposite. Notably, the enhancement of N&lt;sub&gt;d&lt;/sub&gt; by increased hygroscopicity under high N&lt;sub&gt;a&lt;/sub&gt;, and the preservation of cloud and rainwater through evaporation suppression by decreased hygroscopicity, both surpass the effects caused by corresponding aerosol size changes.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="29"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42575082 &amp; 42061134009</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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