Allen, RJ, Zhao, X, Randles, CA et al. (3 more authors) (2023) Surface warming and wetting due to methane’s long-wave radiative effects muted by short-wave absorption. Nature Geoscience. ISSN 1752-0894
Abstract
Although greenhouse gases absorb primarily long-wave radiation, they also absorb short-wave radiation. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of methane short-wave absorption, which enhances its stratospherically adjusted radiative forcing by up to ~ 15%. The corresponding climate impacts, however, have been only indirectly evaluated and thus remain largely unquantified. Here we present a systematic, unambiguous analysis using one model and separate simulations with and without methane short-wave absorption. We find that methane short-wave absorption counteracts ~30% of the surface warming associated with its long-wave radiative effects. An even larger impact occurs for precipitation as methane short-wave absorption offsets ~60% of the precipitation increase relative to its long-wave radiative effects. The methane short-wave-induced cooling is due largely to cloud rapid adjustments, including increased low-level clouds, which enhance the reflection of incoming short-wave radiation, and decreased high-level clouds, which enhance outgoing long-wave radiation. The cloud responses, in turn, are related to the profile of atmospheric solar heating and corresponding changes in temperature and relative humidity. Despite our findings, methane remains a potent contributor to global warming, and efforts to reduce methane emissions are vital for keeping global warming well below 2 °C above preindustrial values.
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | ||||
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Institution: | The University of Leeds | ||||
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) | ||||
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Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications | ||||
Date Deposited: | 20 Mar 2023 10:20 | ||||
Last Modified: | 20 Mar 2023 10:20 | ||||
Status: | Published online | ||||
Publisher: | Nature Research | ||||
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01144-z | ||||
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