Identification

Title

The remote sensing of radiative forcing by light-absorbing particles (LAPs) in seasonal snow over northeastern China

Abstract

Light-absorbing particles (LAPs) deposited on snow can decrease snow albedo and affect climate through snow-albedo radiative forcing. In this study, we use MODIS observations combined with a snow-albedo model (SNICAR – Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiative) and a radiative transfer model (SBDART – Santa Barbara DISORT Atmospheric Radiative Transfer) to retrieve the instantaneous spectrally integrated radiative forcing at the surface by LAPs in snow (RFLAPsMODIS) under clear-sky conditions at the time of MODIS Aqua overpass across northeastern China (NEC) in January–February from 2003 to 2017. RFLAPsMODIS presents distinct spatial variability, with the minimum (22.3 W m−2) in western NEC and the maximum (64.6 W m−2) near industrial areas in central NEC. The regional mean RFLAPsMODIS is ∼45.1±6.8 W m−2 in NEC. The positive (negative) uncertainties of retrieved RFLAPsMODIS due to atmospheric correction range from 14 % to 57 % (−14 % to −47 %), and the uncertainty value basically decreases with the increased RFLAPsMODIS. We attribute the variations of radiative forcing based on remote sensing and find that the spatial variance of RFLAPsMODIS in NEC is 74.6 % due to LAPs and 21.2 % and 4.2 % due to snow grain size and solar zenith angle. Furthermore, based on multiple linear regression, the BC dry and wet deposition and snowfall could explain 84 % of the spatial variance of LAP contents, which confirms the reasonability of the spatial patterns of retrieved RFLAPsMODIS in NEC. We validate RFLAPsMODIS using in situ radiative forcing estimates. We find that the biases in RFLAPsMODIS are negatively correlated with LAP concentrations and range from ∼5 % to ∼350 % in NEC.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7542rnf

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

2019-08-08T00:00:00Z

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