The value of remote marine aerosol measurements for constraining radiative forcing uncertainty

Aerosol measurements over the Southern Ocean are used to constrain aerosol-cloud interaction radiative forcing (RFaci) uncertainty in a global climate model. Forcing uncertainty is quantified using 1 million climate model variants that sample the uncertainty in nearly 30 model parameters. Measuremen...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Regayre, Leighton A., Schmale, Julia, Johnson, Jill S., Tatzelt, Christian, Baccarini, Andrea, Henning, Silvia, Yoshioka, Masaru, Stratmann, Frank, Gysel-Beer, Martin, Grosvenor, Daniel P., Carslaw, Ken S.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Katlenburg-Lindau : EGU 2020
Subjects:
ddc:550
aerosol
climate modeling
cloud condensation nucleus
cloud radiative forcing
global climate
Northern Hemisphere
uncertainty analysis
Southern Ocean
Antarc*
Antarctic
Online Access:https://oa.tib.eu/renate/handle/123456789/6972
https://doi.org/10.34657/6019
Description
Summary:Aerosol measurements over the Southern Ocean are used to constrain aerosol-cloud interaction radiative forcing (RFaci) uncertainty in a global climate model. Forcing uncertainty is quantified using 1 million climate model variants that sample the uncertainty in nearly 30 model parameters. Measurements of cloud condensation nuclei and other aerosol properties from an Antarctic circumnavigation expedition strongly constrain natural aerosol emissions: default sea spray emissions need to be increased by around a factor of 3 to be consistent with measurements. Forcing uncertainty is reduced by around 7% using this set of several hundred measurements, which is comparable to the 8% reduction achieved using a diverse and extensive set of over 9000 predominantly Northern Hemisphere measurements. When Southern Ocean and Northern Hemisphere measurements are combined, uncertainty in RFaci is reduced by 21 %, and the strongest 20% of forcing values are ruled out as implausible. In this combined constraint, observationally plausible RFaci is around 0.17Wm-2 weaker (less negative) with 95% credible values ranging from-2:51 to-1:17Wm-2 (standard deviation of-2:18 to-1:46Wm-2). The Southern Ocean and Northern Hemisphere measurement datasets are complementary because they constrain different processes. These results highlight the value of remote marine aerosol measurements. © 2020 Laser Institute of America. All rights reserved.

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