scholarly journals A simplified empirical method for determination of aerosol hygroscopicity and composition

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 23627-23656
Author(s):  
C. H. Chan ◽  
A. Y. S. Cheng ◽  
A. Viseu

Abstract. Atmospheric aerosols have substantial influence on the Earth's radiation budget, visibility, cloud formation and precipitation. The aerosol hygroscopicity and the composition of aerosols are of vital importance for solar radiation budget calculation, cloud formation mechanism, and measurement of aerosol spatiotemporal distribution through remote sensing, such as Lidar, MODIS and sun/star photometer. In this paper, hourly averaged records of humidity, visibility and aerosol concentration, conducted in Macao, P.R.C. from 1 February 2006 to 31 December 2008 (LT), are used to estimate aerosol hygroscopicity and composition with a simplified empirical method. The result of monthly variation of aerosol hygroscopicity indicates the important role of aerosol composition on optical properties, which is in agreement with the previous study. This aerosol composition pattern is also consistent with the Asiatic Monsoon pattern and vicinity, such as Hong Kong. The monthly variation of aerosol hygroscopicity and composition also shows the necessity to consider such a factor for the aerosols monitoring by remote system and aerosols forcing simulated by climate model.

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (19) ◽  
pp. 14983-15001
Author(s):  
Vlassis A. Karydis ◽  
Alexandra P. Tsimpidi ◽  
Andrea Pozzer ◽  
Jos Lelieveld

Abstract. The acidity of atmospheric particulate matter regulates its mass, composition, and toxicity and has important consequences for public health, ecosystems and climate. Despite these broad impacts, the global distribution and evolution of aerosol particle acidity are unknown. We used the comprehensive atmospheric multiphase chemistry–climate model EMAC (ECHAM5/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry) to investigate the main factors that control aerosol particle acidity and uncovered remarkable variability and unexpected trends during the past 50 years in different parts of the world. Aerosol particle acidity decreased strongly over Europe and North America during the past decades while at the same time it increased over Asia. Our simulations revealed that these particle acidity trends are strongly related to changes in the phase partitioning of nitric acid, production of sulfate in aqueous aerosols, and the aerosol hygroscopicity. It is remarkable that the aerosol hygroscopicity (κ) has increased in many regions following the particle pH. Overall, we find that alkaline compounds, notably ammonium and to a lesser extent crustal cations, regulate the particle pH on a global scale. Given the importance of aerosol particles for the atmospheric energy budget, cloud formation, pollutant deposition, and public health, alkaline species hold the key to control strategies for air quality and climate change.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlassis A. Karydis ◽  
Alexandra P. Tsimpidi ◽  
Andrea Pozzer ◽  
Jos Lelieveld

Abstract. The acidity of atmospheric aerosols regulates the particulate mass, composition and toxicity, and has important consequences for public health, ecosystems and climate. Despite these broad impacts, the global distribution and evolution of aerosol acidity are unknown. We used the particular, comprehensive atmospheric multiphase chemistry – climate model EMAC to investigate the main factors that control aerosol acidity, and uncovered remarkable variability and unexpected trends during the past 50 years in different parts of the world. We find that alkaline compounds, notably ammonium, and to a lesser extent crustal cations, buffer the aerosol pH on a global scale. Given the importance of aerosols for the atmospheric energy budget, cloud formation, pollutant deposition and public health, alkaline species hold the key to control strategies for air quality and climate change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eemeli Holopainen ◽  
Harri Kokkola ◽  
Anton Laakso ◽  
Thomas Kühn

<p><span>Black carbon (BC) affects the radiation budget of the Earth by absorbing solar radiation, darkening snow and ice covers, and influencing cloud formation and life cycle. Modelling BC in remote regions, such as the Arctic, has large inter-model variability which causes variation in the modelled aerosol effect over the Arctic. This variability can be due to differences in the transport of aerosol species which is affected by how wet deposition is modelled. </span></p><p><span> In this study we developed an aerosol size-resolved in-cloud wet deposition scheme for liquid and ice clouds for models which use a size-segregated aerosol description. This scheme was tested in the ECHAM-HAMMOZ global aerosol-climate model. The scheme was compared to the original wet deposition scheme which uses fixed scavenging coefficients for different sized particles. The comparison included vertical profiles and mass and number wet deposition fluxes, and it showed that the current scheme produced spuriously long BC lifetimes when compared to the estimates made in other studies. Thus, to find a better setup for simulating aerosol lifetimes and vertical profiles we conducted simulations where we altered the aerosol emission distribution and hygroscopicity.</span></p><p><span> We compared the modelled BC vertical profiles to the ATom aircraft campaign measurements. In addition, we compared the aerosol lifetimes against those from AEROCOM model means. We found that, without further tuning, the current scheme overestimates the BC concentrations and lifetimes more than the fixed scavenging scheme when compared to the measurements. Sensitivity studies showed that the model skill of reproducing the measured vertical BC mass concentrations improved when BC emissions were directed to larger size classes, they were mixed with soluble compounds during emission, or BC-containing particles were transferred to soluble size classes after aging. These changes also produced atmospheric BC lifetimes which were closer to AEROCOM model means. The best comparison with the measured vertical profiles and estimated BC lifetimes was when BC was mixed with soluble aerosol compounds during emission.</span></p>


2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 535-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy A. Marley ◽  
Jeffrey S. Gaffney ◽  
J. Christopher Baird ◽  
Cherelle A. Blazer ◽  
Paul J. Drayton ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-294
Author(s):  
Grant Matthews

AbstractAmong the best ways to gain more certainty in climate model prediction is to compare and constrain simulations with worldwide satellite measurements of the Earth radiation budget (ERB) short- and longwave radiant fluxes (SW and LW), which drive climate processes. Recent calls to ensure orbital ERB measurements track true climate, rather than instrument changes, led to the creation of the Moon and Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (MERBE). This independent project is recalibrating multiple existing ERB devices from different international space agencies so they adhere to common SI-traceable radiometric standards, by regularly sampling the unaltering constants of lunar reflectivity/emissivity, thus ensuring no artificial trends exist. This work details the use of MODTRAN to give an instantaneous SW and LW Earth spectrum for all scenes viewed by devices in the project, to then be used with instrument spectral responses for unfiltering radiances. In the majority of cases when data from a collocated imager are available, a dual-layer unfiltering is also performed separately on cloudy and cloud-free areas, yielding clear and overcast ERB spectral results. Additionally, use is made of improved in-flight methods to derive spectral responses from a previous American Meteorological Society study, and comparisons between Earth MERBE radiances from two identical devices operating on Terra/Aqua are shown along with results from the CERES project. These demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in relative accuracy for edition 1 MERBE results over CERES and show that the latest CERES data are less accurate and stable than claimed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-163
Author(s):  
X Liu ◽  
Y Kang ◽  
Q Liu ◽  
Z Guo ◽  
Y Chen ◽  
...  

The regional climate model RegCM version 4.6, developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, was used to simulate the radiation budget over China. Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite data were utilized to evaluate the simulation results based on 4 radiative components: net shortwave (NSW) radiation at the surface of the earth and top of the atmosphere (TOA) under all-sky and clear-sky conditions. The performance of the model for low-value areas of NSW was superior to that for high-value areas. NSW at the surface and TOA under all-sky conditions was significantly underestimated; the spatial distribution of the bias was negative in the north and positive in the south, bounded by 25°N for the annual and seasonal averaged difference maps. Compared with the all-sky condition, the simulation effect under clear-sky conditions was significantly better, which indicates that the cloud fraction is the key factor affecting the accuracy of the simulation. In particular, the bias of the TOA NSW under the clear-sky condition was <±10 W m-2 in the eastern areas. The performance of the model was better over the eastern monsoon region in winter and autumn for surface NSW under clear-sky conditions, which may be related to different levels of air pollution during each season. Among the 3 areas, the regional average biases overall were largest (negative) over the Qinghai-Tibet alpine region and smallest over the eastern monsoon region.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 5449-5474 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wang ◽  
J. E. Penner

Abstract. A statistical cirrus cloud scheme that accounts for mesoscale temperature perturbations is implemented in a coupled aerosol and atmospheric circulation model to better represent both subgrid-scale supersaturation and cloud formation. This new scheme treats the effects of aerosol on cloud formation and ice freezing in an improved manner, and both homogeneous freezing and heterogeneous freezing are included. The scheme is able to better simulate the observed probability distribution of relative humidity compared to the scheme that was implemented in an older version of the model. Heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN) are shown to decrease the frequency of occurrence of supersaturation, and improve the comparison with observations at 192 hPa. Homogeneous freezing alone can not reproduce observed ice crystal number concentrations at low temperatures (<205 K), but the addition of heterogeneous IN improves the comparison somewhat. Increases in heterogeneous IN affect both high level cirrus clouds and low level liquid clouds. Increases in cirrus clouds lead to a more cloudy and moist lower troposphere with less precipitation, effects which we associate with the decreased convective activity. The change in the net cloud forcing is not very sensitive to the change in ice crystal concentrations, but the change in the net radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere is still large because of changes in water vapor. Changes in the magnitude of the assumed mesoscale temperature perturbations by 25% alter the ice crystal number concentrations and the net radiative fluxes by an amount that is comparable to that from a factor of 10 change in the heterogeneous IN number concentrations. Further improvements on the representation of mesoscale temperature perturbations, heterogeneous IN and the competition between homogeneous freezing and heterogeneous freezing are needed.


1997 ◽  
Vol 770 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 349-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Dabek-Zlotorzynska ◽  
Maria Piechowski ◽  
Fang Liu ◽  
Scott Kennedy ◽  
Joseph F. Dlouhy

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 569-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean O. Dickey ◽  
Steven L. Marcus ◽  
Olivier de Viron

Abstract Earth’s rotation rate [i.e., length of day (LOD)], the angular momentum of the core (CAM), and surface air temperature (SAT) all have decadal variability. Previous investigators have found that the LOD fluctuations are largely attributed to core–mantle interactions and that the SAT is strongly anticorrelated with the decadal LOD. It is shown here that 1) the correlation among these three quantities exists until 1930, at which time anthropogenic forcing becomes highly significant; 2) correcting for anthropogenic effects, the correlation is present for the full span with a broadband variability centered at 78 yr; and 3) this result underscores the reality of anthropogenic temperature change, its size, and its temporal growth. The cause of this common variability needs to be further investigated and studied. Since temperature cannot affect the CAM or LOD to a sufficient extent, the results favor either a direct effect of Earth’s core-generated magnetic field (e.g., through the modulation of charged-particle fluxes, which may impact cloud formation) or a more indirect effect of some other core process on the climate—or yet another process that affects both. In all three cases, their signals would be much smaller than the anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect on Earth’s radiation budget during the coming century.


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