The variation of cloud amount and light rainy days under heavy pollution over South China during 1960–2009

The ground observation data was used to analyze the variation of cloud amount and light precipitation over South China during 1960–2009. The total cloud cover (TCC) decreases in this period, whereas the low cloud cover (LCC) shows the obvious opposite change with increasing trends. LCP defined as low cloud cover/total cloud cover has increased, and small rainy days (< 10 mm day(−1)) decreased significantly (passing 0.001 significance level) during the past 50 years, which is attributed to the enhanced levels of air pollution in the form of anthropogenic aerosols. The horizontal visibility and sunshine duration are used to depict the anthropogenic aerosol loading. When horizontal visibility declines to 20 km or sunshine duration decreases to 5 h per day, LCC increases 52% or more and LCP increases significantly. The correlation coefficients between LCC and horizontal visibility or sunshine duration are − 0.533 and − 0.927, and the values between LCP and horizontal visibility or sunshine duration are − 0.849 and − 0.641, which pass 0.001 significance level. The results indicated that aerosols likely impacted the long-term trend of cloud amount and light precipitation over South China.