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Resolving Size Distribution of Black Carbon Internally Mixed With Snow: Impact on Snow Optical Properties and Albedo
Author(s) -
He Cenlin,
Liou KuoNan,
Takano Yoshi
Publication year - 2018
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 - 10.1002/2018gl077062
Subject(s) - albedo (alchemy) , snow , atmospheric sciences , aerosol , single scattering albedo , environmental science , carbon black , radiative forcing , dispersity , climatology , meteorology , materials science , geology , physics , art , natural rubber , performance art , composite material , art history , polymer chemistry
Abstract We develop a stochastic aerosol‐snow albedo model that explicitly resolves size distribution of aerosols internally mixed with various snow grains. We use the model to quantify black carbon (BC) size effects on snow albedo and optical properties for BC‐snow internal mixing. Results show that BC‐induced snow single‐scattering coalbedo enhancement and albedo reduction decrease by a factor of 2–3 with increasing BC effective radii from 0.05 to 0.25 μm, while polydisperse BC results in up to 40% smaller visible single‐scattering coalbedo enhancement and albedo reduction compared to monodisperse BC with equivalent effective radii. We further develop parameterizations for BC size effects for application to climate models. Compared with a realistic polydisperse assumption and observed shifts to larger BC sizes in snow, respectively, assuming monodisperse BC and typical atmospheric BC effective radii could lead to overestimates of ~24% and ~40% in BC‐snow albedo forcing averaged over different BC and snow conditions.