Regayre, L.A., Schmale, J., Johnson, J.S. orcid.org/0000-0002-4587-6722 et al. (8 more authors)
(2020)
The value of remote marine aerosol measurements for constraining radiative forcing uncertainty.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 20 (16).
pp. 10063-10072.
ISSN 1680-7316
Abstract
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 0.17 W m−2 weaker (less negative) with 95 % credible values ranging from −2.51 to −1.17 W m−2 (standard deviation of −2.18 to −1.46 W m−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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: | This paper has 11 authors. You can scroll the list below to see them all or them all.
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Natural Environment Research Council NE/P013406/1 Natural Environment Research Council NE/J024252/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 18 Jan 2022 14:38 |
Last Modified: | 18 Jan 2022 14:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Copernicus GmbH |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/acp-20-10063-2020 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:182669 |