Reflectivity variations off the Peru Coast: Evidence for indirect effect of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols on clouds

Using reflectivity measurements from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), we show that over the months when stratocumulus clouds are prominent off the Peru Coast, the ultraviolet (UV) reflectance of two marine sites is consistently higher than that of the surroundings. The regions of reflectivity enhancement coincide with large anthropogenic sulfate aerosol emission sources, and the magnitude of the enhancement has a strong seasonal dependence that is related to the seasonal cloud movement. We propose the indirect aerosol effect as a plausible explanation for the reflectivity observations.