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Climate Impacts of CALIPSO‐Guided Corrections to Black Carbon Aerosol Vertical Distributions in a Global Climate Model
Author(s) -
Kovilakam Mahesh,
Mahajan Salil,
Saravanan R.,
Chang Ping
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2017gl074652
Subject(s) - atmospheric sciences , environmental science , climatology , climate model , radiative forcing , aerosol , hadley cell , atmosphere (unit) , southern hemisphere , intertropical convergence zone , troposphere , northern hemisphere , precipitation , climate change , geology , meteorology , physics , general circulation model , oceanography
We alleviate the bias in the tropospheric vertical distribution of black carbon aerosols (BC) in the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4) using the Cloud‐Aerosol and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO)‐derived vertical profiles. A suite of sensitivity experiments are conducted with 1x, 5x, and 10x the present‐day model estimated BC concentration climatology, with (corrected, CC) and without (uncorrected, UC) CALIPSO‐corrected BC vertical distribution. The globally averaged top of the atmosphere radiative flux perturbation of CC experiments is ∼8–50% smaller compared to uncorrected (UC) BC experiments largely due to an increase in low‐level clouds. The global average surface temperature increases, the global average precipitation decreases, and the ITCZ moves northward with the increase in BC radiative forcing, irrespective of the vertical distribution of BC. Further, tropical expansion metrics for the poleward extent of the Northern Hemisphere Hadley cell (HC) indicate that simulated HC expansion is not sensitive to existing model biases in BC vertical distribution.