Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing

Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) are considered to be the most uncertain driver of present-day radiative forcing due to human activities. The nonlinearity of cloud-state changes to aerosol perturbations make it challenging to attribute causality in observed relationships of aerosol radiative forcin...

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Autores principales: Christensen, Matthew W., Gettelman, Andrew, Cermak, Jan, Dagan, Guy, Diamond, Michael, Douglas, Alyson, Feingold, Graham, Glassmeier, Franziska, Goren, Tom, Grosvenor, Daniel P., Gryspeerdt, Edward, Kahn, Ralph, Li, Zhanqing, Ma, Po-Lun, Malavelle, Florent, McCoy, Isabel L., McCoy, Daniel T., McFarquhar, Greg, Mülmenstädt, Johannes, Pal, Sandip, Possner, Anna, Povey, Adam, Quaas, Johannes, Rosenfeld, Daniel, Schmidt, Anja, Schrödner, Roland, Sorooshian, Armin, Stier, Philip, Toll, Velle, Watson-Parris, Duncan, Wood, Robert, Yang, Mingxi, Yuan, Tianle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8819675/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35136405
http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022
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author Christensen, Matthew W.
Gettelman, Andrew
Cermak, Jan
Dagan, Guy
Diamond, Michael
Douglas, Alyson
Feingold, Graham
Glassmeier, Franziska
Goren, Tom
Grosvenor, Daniel P.
Gryspeerdt, Edward
Kahn, Ralph
Li, Zhanqing
Ma, Po-Lun
Malavelle, Florent
McCoy, Isabel L.
McCoy, Daniel T.
McFarquhar, Greg
Mülmenstädt, Johannes
Pal, Sandip
Possner, Anna
Povey, Adam
Quaas, Johannes
Rosenfeld, Daniel
Schmidt, Anja
Schrödner, Roland
Sorooshian, Armin
Stier, Philip
Toll, Velle
Watson-Parris, Duncan
Wood, Robert
Yang, Mingxi
Yuan, Tianle
author_facet Christensen, Matthew W.
Gettelman, Andrew
Cermak, Jan
Dagan, Guy
Diamond, Michael
Douglas, Alyson
Feingold, Graham
Glassmeier, Franziska
Goren, Tom
Grosvenor, Daniel P.
Gryspeerdt, Edward
Kahn, Ralph
Li, Zhanqing
Ma, Po-Lun
Malavelle, Florent
McCoy, Isabel L.
McCoy, Daniel T.
McFarquhar, Greg
Mülmenstädt, Johannes
Pal, Sandip
Possner, Anna
Povey, Adam
Quaas, Johannes
Rosenfeld, Daniel
Schmidt, Anja
Schrödner, Roland
Sorooshian, Armin
Stier, Philip
Toll, Velle
Watson-Parris, Duncan
Wood, Robert
Yang, Mingxi
Yuan, Tianle
author_sort Christensen, Matthew W.
collection PubMed
description Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) are considered to be the most uncertain driver of present-day radiative forcing due to human activities. The nonlinearity of cloud-state changes to aerosol perturbations make it challenging to attribute causality in observed relationships of aerosol radiative forcing. Using correlations to infer causality can be challenging when meteorological variability also drives both aerosol and cloud changes independently. Natural and anthropogenic aerosol perturbations from well-defined sources provide “opportunistic experiments” (also known as natural experiments) to investigate ACI in cases where causality may be more confidently inferred. These perturbations cover a wide range of locations and spatiotemporal scales, including point sources such as volcanic eruptions or industrial sources, plumes from biomass burning or forest fires, and tracks from individual ships or shipping corridors. We review the different experimental conditions and conduct a synthesis of the available satellite datasets and field campaigns to place these opportunistic experiments on a common footing, facilitating new insights and a clearer understanding of key uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcing. Cloud albedo perturbations are strongly sensitive to background meteorological conditions. Strong liquid water path increases due to aerosol perturbations are largely ruled out by averaging across experiments. Opportunistic experiments have significantly improved process-level understanding of ACI, but it remains unclear how reliably the relationships found can be scaled to the global level, thus demonstrating a need for deeper investigation in order to improve assessments of aerosol radiative forcing and climate change.
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spelling pubmed-88196752022-02-07 Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing Christensen, Matthew W. Gettelman, Andrew Cermak, Jan Dagan, Guy Diamond, Michael Douglas, Alyson Feingold, Graham Glassmeier, Franziska Goren, Tom Grosvenor, Daniel P. Gryspeerdt, Edward Kahn, Ralph Li, Zhanqing Ma, Po-Lun Malavelle, Florent McCoy, Isabel L. McCoy, Daniel T. McFarquhar, Greg Mülmenstädt, Johannes Pal, Sandip Possner, Anna Povey, Adam Quaas, Johannes Rosenfeld, Daniel Schmidt, Anja Schrödner, Roland Sorooshian, Armin Stier, Philip Toll, Velle Watson-Parris, Duncan Wood, Robert Yang, Mingxi Yuan, Tianle Atmos Chem Phys Article Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) are considered to be the most uncertain driver of present-day radiative forcing due to human activities. The nonlinearity of cloud-state changes to aerosol perturbations make it challenging to attribute causality in observed relationships of aerosol radiative forcing. Using correlations to infer causality can be challenging when meteorological variability also drives both aerosol and cloud changes independently. Natural and anthropogenic aerosol perturbations from well-defined sources provide “opportunistic experiments” (also known as natural experiments) to investigate ACI in cases where causality may be more confidently inferred. These perturbations cover a wide range of locations and spatiotemporal scales, including point sources such as volcanic eruptions or industrial sources, plumes from biomass burning or forest fires, and tracks from individual ships or shipping corridors. We review the different experimental conditions and conduct a synthesis of the available satellite datasets and field campaigns to place these opportunistic experiments on a common footing, facilitating new insights and a clearer understanding of key uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcing. Cloud albedo perturbations are strongly sensitive to background meteorological conditions. Strong liquid water path increases due to aerosol perturbations are largely ruled out by averaging across experiments. Opportunistic experiments have significantly improved process-level understanding of ACI, but it remains unclear how reliably the relationships found can be scaled to the global level, thus demonstrating a need for deeper investigation in order to improve assessments of aerosol radiative forcing and climate change. 2022-01 2022-01-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8819675/ /pubmed/35136405 http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
spellingShingle Article
Christensen, Matthew W.
Gettelman, Andrew
Cermak, Jan
Dagan, Guy
Diamond, Michael
Douglas, Alyson
Feingold, Graham
Glassmeier, Franziska
Goren, Tom
Grosvenor, Daniel P.
Gryspeerdt, Edward
Kahn, Ralph
Li, Zhanqing
Ma, Po-Lun
Malavelle, Florent
McCoy, Isabel L.
McCoy, Daniel T.
McFarquhar, Greg
Mülmenstädt, Johannes
Pal, Sandip
Possner, Anna
Povey, Adam
Quaas, Johannes
Rosenfeld, Daniel
Schmidt, Anja
Schrödner, Roland
Sorooshian, Armin
Stier, Philip
Toll, Velle
Watson-Parris, Duncan
Wood, Robert
Yang, Mingxi
Yuan, Tianle
Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title_full Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title_fullStr Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title_full_unstemmed Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title_short Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
title_sort opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8819675/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35136405
http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022
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