Identification

Title

Constraining cloud lifetime effects of aerosols using A-Train satellite observations

Abstract

Aerosol indirect effects have remained the largest uncertainty in estimates of the radiative forcing of past and future climate change. Observational constraints on cloud lifetime effects are particularly challenging since it is difficult to separate aerosol effects from meteorological influences. Here we use three global climate models, including a multi-scale aerosol-climate model PNNL-MMF, to show that the dependence of the probability of precipitation on aerosol loading, termed the precipitation frequency susceptibility (Spop), is a good measure of the liquid water path response to aerosol perturbation (λ), as both Spop and λ strongly depend on the magnitude of autoconversion, a model representation of precipitation formation via collisions among cloud droplets. This provides a method to use satellite observations to constrain cloud lifetime effects in global climate models. Spop in marine clouds estimated from CloudSat, MODIS and AMSR-E observations is substantially lower than that from global climate models and suggests a liquid water path increase of less than 5% from doubled cloud condensation nuclei concentrations. This implies a substantially smaller impact on shortwave cloud radiative forcing over ocean due to aerosol indirect effects than simulated by current global climate models (a reduction by one-third for one of the conventional aerosol-climate models). Further work is needed to quantify the uncertainties in satellite-derived estimates of Spop and to examine Spop in high-resolution models.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cr5v28

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-08-15T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact