scholarly journals Climate effects of seasonally varying Biomass Burning emitted Carbonaceous Aerosols (BBCA)

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (17) ◽  
pp. 8373-8389 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.-R. Jeong ◽  
C. Wang

Abstract. The climate impact of the seasonality of Biomass Burning emitted Carbonaceous Aerosols (BBCA) is studied using an aerosol-climate model coupled with a slab ocean model in a set of 60-year long simulations, driven by BBCA emission data with and without seasonal variation, respectively. The model run with seasonally varying emission of BBCA leads to an increase in the external mixture of carbonaceous aerosols as well as in the internal mixture of organic carbon and sulfate but a decrease in the internal mixture of black carbon and sulfate relative to those in the run with constant annual BBCA emissions, as a result of different strengths of source/sink processes. The differences in atmospheric direct radiative forcing (DRF) caused by BBCA seasonality are in phase with the differences in column concentrations of the external mixture of carbonaceous aerosols in space and time. In contrast, the differences in all-sky radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere and at the earth's surface extend beyond the BBCA source regions due to climate feedback through cloud distribution and precipitation. The seasonality of biomass burning emissions uniquely affects the global distributions of convective clouds and precipitation, indicating that these emissions have an impact on atmospheric circulation. In addition, the climate response to the periodic climate forcing of BBCA is not limited to biomass burning seasons but dynamically extends into non-biomass burning seasons as well.

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 9431-9462 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.-R. Jeong ◽  
C. Wang

Abstract. The climate impact of the seasonality of Biomass Burning emitted Carbonaceous Aerosols (BBCA) has been studied using an aerosol-climate model coupled with a slab ocean model in a set of 60-year long simulations driven by BBCA emission data with and without seasonal variation, respectively. The model run with seasonally varying emission of BBCA leads to an increase in external mixture of carbonaceous aerosols and a decrease in internal mixtures of carbonaceous aerosols relative to those in the run with constant annual BBCA emissions, resulting from different strengths of source/sink processes. We find that the differences in atmospheric direct radiative forcing (DRF) caused by BBCA seasonality are in phase with the differences in column concentrations of an external mixture of carbonaceous aerosols in space and time; thus, the differences in surface temperature and heat fluxes are limited to the biomass burning source regions. In contrast, the differences in all-sky radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere and at the earth's surface extend beyond the BBCA source regions due to climate feedback through cloud distribution and precipitation. The seasonality of biomass burning emissions uniquely affects the global distributions of high-level clouds and convective precipitation, which indicate an impact on atmospheric circulation. We especially find that the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifts northward when the seasonality of BBCA emissions is included in the model, compared to the case otherwise configured. In addition, the climate response to the periodic climate forcing of BBCA is not static in biomass burning seasons but dynamically extends into non-biomass seasons as well. The climate effects in contrasting biomass burning seasons occur in the springtime in northern Tropics with the largest difference in precipitation and mixed aerosol abundance caused by the seasonality of BBCA.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (22) ◽  
pp. 8597-8607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Caldeira ◽  
Ivana Cvijanovic

Abstract The response of sea ice to climate change affects Earth’s radiative properties in ways that contribute to yet more climate change. Here, a configuration of the Community Earth System Model, version 1.0.4 (CESM 1.0.4), with a slab ocean model and a thermodynamic–dynamic sea ice model is used to investigate the overall contribution to climate sensitivity of feedbacks associated with the sea ice loss. In simulations in which sea ice is not present and ocean temperatures are allowed to fall below freezing, the climate feedback parameter averages ~1.31 W m−2 K−1; the value obtained for control simulations with active sea ice is ~1.05 W m−2 K−1, indicating that, in this configuration of CESM1.0.4, sea ice response accounts for ~20% of climate sensitivity to an imposed change in radiative forcing. In this model, the effect of sea ice response on the longwave climate feedback parameter is nearly half as important as its effect on the shortwave climate feedback parameter. Further, it is shown that the strength of the overall sea ice feedback can be related to 1) the sensitivity of sea ice area to changes in temperature and 2) the sensitivity of sea ice radiative forcing to changes in sea ice area. An alternative method of disabling sea ice response leads to similar conclusions. It is estimated that the presence of sea ice in the preindustrial control simulation has a climate effect equivalent to ~3 W m−2 of radiative forcing.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Negar Vakilifard ◽  
Katherine Turner ◽  
Ric Williams ◽  
Philip Holden ◽  
Neil Edwards ◽  
...  

<p>The controls of the effective transient climate response (TCRE), defined in terms of the dependence of surface warming since the pre-industrial to the cumulative carbon emission, is explained in terms of climate model experiments for a scenario including positive emissions and then negative emission over a period of 400 years. We employ a pre-calibrated ensemble of GENIE, grid-enabled integrated Earth system model, consisting of 86 members to determine the process of controlling TCRE in both CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and drawdown phases. Our results are based on the GENIE simulations with historical forcing from AD 850 including land use change, and the future forcing defined by CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and a non-CO<sub>2</sub> radiative forcing timeseries. We present the results for the point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario as a negative emission scenario, following the medium representative concentration pathway (RCP4.5), assuming that the rate of emission drawdown is 2 PgC/yr CO<sub>2</sub> for the duration of 100 years. The climate response differs between the periods of positive and negative carbon emissions with a greater ensemble spread during the negative carbon emissions. The controls of the spread in ensemble responses are explained in terms of a combination of thermal processes (involving ocean heat uptake and physical climate feedback), radiative processes (saturation in radiative forcing from CO<sub>2</sub> and non-CO<sub>2</sub> contributions) and carbon dependences (involving terrestrial and ocean carbon uptake).  </p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 24349-24385 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Sakamoto ◽  
J. D. Allan ◽  
H. Coe ◽  
J. W. Taylor ◽  
T. J. Duck ◽  
...  

Abstract. Biomass-burning aerosols contribute to aerosol radiative forcing on the climate system. The magnitude of this effect is partially determined by aerosol size distributions, which are functions of source fire characteristics (e.g. fuel type, MCE) and in-plume microphysical processing. The uncertainties in biomass-burning emission number size-distributions in climate model inventories lead to uncertainties in the CCN concentrations and forcing estimates derived from these models. The BORTAS-B measurement campaign was designed to sample boreal biomass-burning outflow over Eastern Canada in the summer of 2011. Using these BORTAS-B data, we implement plume criteria to isolate the characteristic size-distribution of aged biomass-burning emissions (aged ∼1–2 days) from boreal wildfires in Northwestern Ontario. The composite median size-distribution yields a single dominant accumulation mode with Dpm = 230 nm (number-median diameter), σ = 1.7, which are comparable to literature values of other aged plumes of a similar type. The organic aerosol enhancement ratios (ΔOA / ΔCO) along the path of Flight b622 show values of 0.05–0.18 μg m−3 ppbv−1 with no significant trend with distance from the source. This lack of enhancement ratio increase/decrease with distance suggests no detectable net OA production/evaporation within the aged plume over the sampling period. A Lagrangian microphysical model was used to determine an estimate of the freshly emitted size distribution corresponding to the BORTAS-B aged size-distributions. The model was restricted to coagulation and dilution processes based on the insignificant net OA production/evaporation derived from the ΔOA / ΔCO enhancement ratios. We estimate that the fresh-plume median diameter was in the range of 59–94 nm with modal widths in the range of 1.7–2.8 (the ranges are due to uncertainty in the entrainment rate). Thus, the size of the freshly emitted particles is relatively unconstrained due to the uncertainties in the plume dilution rates.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2727-2765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroaki Tatebe ◽  
Tomoo Ogura ◽  
Tomoko Nitta ◽  
Yoshiki Komuro ◽  
Koji Ogochi ◽  
...  

Abstract. The sixth version of the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC), called MIROC6, was cooperatively developed by a Japanese modeling community. In the present paper, simulated mean climate, internal climate variability, and climate sensitivity in MIROC6 are evaluated and briefly summarized in comparison with the previous version of our climate model (MIROC5) and observations. The results show that the overall reproducibility of mean climate and internal climate variability in MIROC6 is better than that in MIROC5. The tropical climate systems (e.g., summertime precipitation in the western Pacific and the eastward-propagating Madden–Julian oscillation) and the midlatitude atmospheric circulation (e.g., the westerlies, the polar night jet, and troposphere–stratosphere interactions) are significantly improved in MIROC6. These improvements can be attributed to the newly implemented parameterization for shallow convective processes and to the inclusion of the stratosphere. While there are significant differences in climates and variabilities between the two models, the effective climate sensitivity of 2.6 K remains the same because the differences in radiative forcing and climate feedback tend to offset each other. With an aim towards contributing to the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, designated simulations tackling a wide range of climate science issues, as well as seasonal to decadal climate predictions and future climate projections, are currently ongoing using MIROC6.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Meraner ◽  
Hauke Schmidt

Abstract. Energetic particles enter the polar atmosphere and enhance the production of nitrogen oxides and hydrogen oxides in the winter stratosphere and mesosphere. Both components are powerful ozone destroyers. Recently, it has been inferred from observations that the direct effect of energetic particle precipitation (EPP) causes significant long-term mesospheric ozone variability. Satellites observe a decrease in mesospheric ozone by up to 34 % between EPP maximum and EPP minimum. Here, we analyze the climate impact of polar mesospheric and polar stratospheric ozone losses due to EPP in the coupled climate model MPI-ESM. Using radiative transfer modeling, we find that the radiative forcing of a mesospheric ozone loss during polar night is small. Hence, climate effects of a mesospheric ozone loss due to energetic particles seem unlikely. A stratospheric ozone loss due to energetic particles warms the winter polar stratosphere and subsequently weakens the polar vortex. However, those changes are small, and few statistically significant changes in surface climate are found.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Neubauer ◽  
Sylvaine Ferrachat ◽  
Colombe Siegenthaler-Le Drian ◽  
Philip Stier ◽  
Daniel G. Partridge ◽  
...  

Abstract. The global aerosol-climate model ECHAM6.3-HAM2.3 (E63H23) and the previous model versions ECHAM5.5-HAM2.0 (E55H20) and ECHAM6.1-HAM2.2 (E61H22) are evaluated using global observational datasets for clouds and precipitation. In E63H23 low cloud amount, liquid and ice water path and cloud radiative effects are more realistic than in previous model versions. E63H23 has a more physically based aerosol activation scheme, improvements in the cloud cover scheme, changes in detrainment of convective clouds, changes in the sticking efficiency for accretion of ice crystals by snow, consistent ice crystal shapes throughout the model, changes in mixed phase freezing and an inconsistency in ice crystal number concentration (ICNC) in cirrus clouds was removed. Biases that were identified in E63H23 (and in previous model versions) are a too low cloud amount in stratocumulus regions, deep convective clouds in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans form too close to the continents and there are indications that ICNCs are overestimated. Since clouds are important for effective radiative forcing due to aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions (ERFari+aci) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), also differences in ERFari+aci and ECS between the model versions were analyzed. ERFari+aci is weaker in E63H23 (−1.0 W m−2) than in E61H22 (−1.2 W m−2) (or E55H20; −1.1 W m−2). This is caused by the weaker shortwave ERFari+aci (new aerosol activation scheme and sea salt emission parameterization in E63H23, more realistic simulation of cloud water) overcompensating the weaker longwave ERFari+aci (removal of an inconsistency in ICNC in cirrus clouds in E61H22). The decrease in ECS in E63H23 (2.5 K) compared to E61H22 (2.8 K) is due to changes in the entrainment rate for shallow convection (affecting the cloud amount feedback) and a stronger cloud phase feedback.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 11451-11463 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Yu ◽  
G. Luo ◽  
X. Liu ◽  
R. C. Easter ◽  
X. Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract. A clear understanding of particle formation mechanisms is critical for assessing aerosol indirect radiative forcing and associated climate feedback processes. Recent studies reveal the importance of ion-mediated nucleation (IMN) in generating new particles and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the atmosphere. Here we implement the IMN scheme into the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5). Our simulations show that, compared to globally averaged results based on H2SO4-H2O binary homogeneous nucleation (BHN), the presence of ionization (i.e., IMN) halves H2SO4 column burden, but increases the column integrated nucleation rate by around one order of magnitude, total particle number burden by a factor of ~3, CCN burden by ~10% (at 0.2% supersaturation) to 65% (at 1.0% supersaturation), and cloud droplet number burden by ~18%. Compared to BHN, IMN increases cloud liquid water path by 7.5%, decreases precipitation by 1.1%, and increases total cloud cover by 1.9%. This leads to an increase of total shortwave cloud radiative forcing (SWCF) by 3.67 W m−2 (more negative) and longwave cloud forcing by 1.78 W m−2 (more positive), with large spatial variations. The effect of ionization on SWCF derived from this study (3.67 W m−2) is a factor of ~3 higher that of a previous study (1.15 W m−2) based on a different ion nucleation scheme and climate model. Based on the present CAM5 simulation, the 5-yr mean impacts of solar cycle induced changes in ionization rates on CCN and cloud forcing are small (~−0.02 W m−2) but have larger inter-annual (from −0.18 to 0.17 W m−2) and spatial variations.


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