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Anthropogenic Aerosol Indirect Effects in Cirrus Clouds
Author(s) -
Penner Joyce E.,
Zhou Cheng,
Garnier Anne,
Mitchell David L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1029/2018jd029204
Subject(s) - cirrus , atmospheric sciences , soot , forcing (mathematics) , radiative forcing , aerosol , environmental science , tropopause , ice nucleus , climatology , climate model , troposphere , biomass burning , sulfate aerosol , climate change , meteorology , chemistry , combustion , geology , stratosphere , geography , oceanography , nucleation , organic chemistry
We have implemented a parameterization for forming ice in large‐scale cirrus clouds that accounts for the changes in updrafts associated with a spectrum of waves acting within each time step in the model. This allows us to account for the frequency of homogeneous and heterogeneous freezing events that occur within each time step of the model and helps to determine more realistic ice number concentrations as well as changes to ice number concentrations. The model is able to fit observations of ice number at the lowest temperatures in the tropical tropopause but is still somewhat high in tropical latitudes with temperatures between 195°K and 215°K. The climate forcings associated with different representations of heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN or INPs) are primarily negative unless large additions of IN are made, such as when we assumed that all aircraft soot acts as an IN. However, they can be close to zero if it is assumed that all background dust can act as an INP irrespective of how much sulfate is deposited on these particles. Our best estimate for the forcing of anthropogenic aircraft soot in this model is −0.2 ± 0.06 W/m 2 , while that from anthropogenic fossil/biofuel soot is −0.093 ± 0.033 W/m 2 . Natural and anthropogenic open biomass burning leads to a net forcing of −0.057 ± 0.05 W/m 2 .