Evaluation of preindustrial to present-day black carbon and its albedo forcing from Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP)

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Y. H. Lee, J.-F. Lamarque, M. G. Flanner, C. Jiao, D. T. Shindell, T. Berntsen, M. M. Bisiaux, J. Cao, W. J. Collins, M. Curran, R. Edwards, G. Faluvegi, S. Ghan, L. W. Horowitz, J. R. McConnell, J. Ming, G. Myhre, T. Nagashima, V. Naik, S. T. Rumbold, R. B. Skeie, K. Sudo, T. Takemura, F. Thevenon, B. Xu, J.-H. Yoon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2013
• Subjects: Physics; QC1-999; Chemistry; QD1-999; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Greenland; albedo; black carbon; ice core
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-13-2607-2013; https://doaj.org/article/1f554aa40c9f430bbb236ba2f72443b3

As part of the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP), we evaluate the historical black carbon (BC) aerosols simulated by 8 ACCMIP models against observations including 12 ice core records, long-term surface mass concentrations, and recent Arctic BC snowpack measurements. We also estimate BC albedo forcing by performing additional simulations using offline models with prescribed meteorology from 1996–2000. We evaluate the vertical profile of BC snow concentrations from these offline simulations using the recent BC snowpack measurements. Despite using the same BC emissions, the global BC burden differs by approximately a factor of 3 among models due to differences in aerosol removal parameterizations and simulated meteorology: 34 Gg to 103 Gg in 1850 and 82 Gg to 315 Gg in 2000. However, the global BC burden from preindustrial to present-day increases by 2.5–3 times with little variation among models, roughly matching the 2.5-fold increase in total BC emissions during the same period. We find a large divergence among models at both Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) high latitude regions for BC burden and at SH high latitude regions for deposition fluxes. The ACCMIP simulations match the observed BC surface mass concentrations well in Europe and North America except at Ispra. However, the models fail to predict the Arctic BC seasonality due to severe underestimations during winter and spring. The simulated vertically resolved BC snow concentrations are, on average, within a factor of 2–3 of the BC snowpack measurements except for Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. For the ice core evaluation, models tend to adequately capture both the observed temporal trends and the magnitudes at Greenland sites. However, models fail to predict the decreasing trend of BC depositions/ice core concentrations from the 1950s to the 1970s in most Tibetan Plateau ice cores. The distinct temporal trend at the Tibetan Plateau ice cores indicates a strong influence from Western Europe, ...