Aerosols have significant and complex impacts on regional climate in East Asia. Cloud‐aerosol‐precipitation interactions (CAPI) remain most challenging in climate studies. The quantitative understanding of CAPI requires good knowledge of aerosols, ranging from their formation, composition, transport, and their radiative, hygroscopic, and microphysical properties. A comprehensive review is presented here centered on the CAPI based chiefly, but not limited to, publications in the special section named EAST‐AIRcpc concerning (1) observations of aerosol loading and properties, (2) relationships between aerosols and meteorological variables affecting CAPI, (3) mechanisms behind CAPI, and (4) quantification of CAPI and their impact on climate. Heavy aerosol loading in East Asia has significant radiative effects by reducing surface radiation, increasing the air temperature, and lowering the boundary layer height. A key factor is aerosol absorption, which is particularly strong in central China. This absorption can have a wide range of impacts such as creating an imbalance of aerosol radiative forcing at the top and bottom of the atmosphere, leading to inconsistent retrievals of cloud variables from space‐borne and ground‐based instruments. Aerosol radiative forcing can delay or suppress the initiation and development of convective clouds whose microphysics can be further altered by the microphysical effect of aerosols. For the same cloud thickness, the likelihood of precipitation is influenced by aerosols: suppressing light rain and enhancing heavy rain, delaying but intensifying thunderstorms, and reducing the onset of isolated showers in most parts of China. Rainfall has become more inhomogeneous and more extreme in the heavily polluted urban regions.

In this work, the authors investigated the spring dust storm frequency variations in northern China and its relationship with weather disturbances, cold high, eddy kinetic energy (EKE), as well as the impact of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) on the dust storm frequency variations. It is found that there is a significantly decreasing trend of −26%/10 years in the dust storm frequency variations. In addition, the year‐to‐year variations are also remarkable, which account for 58.3% of the total variance of the dust storm frequency variations. The synoptic variance of 850 hPa height, EKE, and near‐surface cold highs are highly correlated with the dust storm frequency variations. During the last 40 years or so, there have been significant trends in synoptic variance, cold‐high frequency, and kinetic energy over northern China and Mongolia, which are −3.2, −4.0, and −5.0%/10 years, respectively. The trends are fairly consistent with long‐term variations of dust storm frequency. The AO shows good correlation with the interannual variations of the dust storm frequency. This out‐of‐phase relation is supported by the significantly negative correlations between AO index and eddy growth rate between 850/700 hPa in midlatitude East Asia, implying that AO can modulate weather disturbances and dust storm activities through influencing the atmospheric instability. It is found, however, that the spring AO index shows no evident long‐term trend. Land cover changes, global warming, and other climate teleconnections may, at least partly, be responsible for the secular decreasing of dust storm frequency over northern China. Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society.