Identification

Title

The responses of cloudiness to the direct radiative effect of sulfate and carbonaceous aerosols

Abstract

This study investigates the responses of the direct radiative effect of light absorbing and scattering carbonaceous and sulfate aerosols on cloudiness and associated radiative fluxes using an interactive aerosol-climate model coupled with a slab ocean model. We find that without including the impact of aerosols on cloud microphysics in the model (indirect effect), the direct radiative effect of aerosols alone can cause a change in cloud coverage and thus in cloud flux change which is consistent with several previous studies. More notably, our result indicates that the direct radiative effect of absorbing aerosols can cause changes in both low-level and high-level clouds with opposite signs. As a result, the global mean cloud radiation response to absorbing aerosols has a rather small value. The change of cloud solar radiative response (all-sky effect minus clear-sky effect) at the top of the atmosphere due to the existence of direct radiative effect of scattering, absorbing, and both types of aerosols is 0.72, 0.08, and 0.81 Wm⁻², respectively, all are comparable in quantity to the current estimation of aerosol direct radiative forcing. The cloud response due to the longwave radiative effect is 0.09, 0.18, and 0.27 Wm⁻², respectively. The global means of the radiative flux and cloud radiative responses appear to be linearly additive; however, this is definitely not the case for the zonal mean or at the regional scale.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76w9c1c

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

2014-02-16T00:00:00Z

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