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Radiative Forcing and Stratospheric Warming of Pyrocumulonimbus Smoke Aerosols: First Modeling Results With Multisensor (EPIC, CALIPSO, and CATS) Views from Space
Author(s) -
Christian Kenneth,
Wang Jun,
Ge Cui,
Peterson David,
Hyer Edward,
Yorks John,
McGill Matthew
Publication year - 2019
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 - 10.1029/2019gl082360
Subject(s) - stratosphere , radiative forcing , troposphere , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , aerosol , climatology , climate model , lidar , smoke , radiative transfer , atmosphere (unit) , forcing (mathematics) , meteorology , climate change , remote sensing , geology , physics , oceanography , quantum mechanics
Smoke particles can be injected by pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, but their effects on the radiative budget of the planet remain elusive. Here, by focusing on the record‐setting Pacific Northwest pyroCb event of August 2017, we show with satellite‐based estimates of pyroCb emissions and injection heights in a chemical transport model (GEOS‐Chem) that pyroCb smoke particles can result in radiative forcing of ∼0.02 W/m 2 at the top of the atmosphere averaged globally in the 2 months following the event and up to 0.9 K/day heating in the Arctic upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. The modeled aerosol distributions agree with observations from satellites (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera [EPIC], Cloud‐Aerosol Transport System [CATS], and Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization [CALIOP]), showing the hemispheric transport of pyroCb smoke aerosols with a lifetime of 5 months. Hence, warming by pyroCb aerosols can have similar temporal duration but opposite sign to the well‐documented cooling of volcanic aerosols and be significant for climate prediction.