Regayre, LA orcid.org/0000-0003-2699-929X, Schmale, J, Johnson, JS 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 1680-7324
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 |
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Authors/Creators: |
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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: |
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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) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > National Centre for Atmos Science (NCAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Oct 2020 15:12 |
Last Modified: | 13 Oct 2020 15:12 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Copernicus |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/acp-20-10063-2020 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166578 |