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Aerosol Information
| readme_txt | Information on data and publication for the global aerosol climatology |
| Publication | An AeroCom initial assessment - optical properties in aerosol component modules of global models Abstract The AeroCom exercise diagnoses multi-component aerosol modules in global modeling. In an initial assessment simulated global distributions for mass and mid-visible aerosol optical thickness (aot) were compared among 20 different modules. Model diversity was 5 also explored in the context of previous comparisons. For the component combined aot general agreement has improved for the annual global mean. At 0.11 to 0.14, simulated aot values are at the lower end of global averages suggested by remote sensing from ground (AERONET ca. 0.135) and space (satellite composite ca. 0.15). More detailed comparisons, however, reveal that larger differences in 10 regional distribution and significant differences in compositional mixture remain. Of particular concern are large model diversities for contributions by dust and carbonaceous aerosol, because they lead to significant uncertainty in aerosol absorption (aab). Since aot and aab, both, influence the aerosol impact on the radiative energy-balance, the aerosol (direct) forcing uncertainty in modeling is larger than differences in aot 15 might suggest. New diagnostic approaches are proposed to trace model differences in terms of aerosol processing and transport: These include the prescription of common input (e.g. amount, size and injection of aerosol component emissions) and the use of observational capabilities from ground (e.g. measurements networks) or space (e.g. correlations between aerosol and clouds). |
| Report as PDF | Aerosol Direct Radiative Forcing with an AERONET touch Introduction Aerosol introduces one of the largest uncertainties in climate research. Aerosol originates from different sources and has short lifetimes on the order of a few days. Thus, aerosol properties (characterized by amount, size and composition) and their vertical distribution vary strongly by location and in time. Complicating factors to assessments of the aerosol impact on climate are uncertainty and the variability of environmental properties such as clouds and surface properties, which modulate the aerosol associated impact. The impact of any atmospheric change is commonly quantified by radiative ... |
| gamtomeda2 | angstrom parameter (870-440nm) |
| gomtomeda2 | aot, Aerosol optical depth at 550 nm |
| gwmtomeda2 | single-scattering-albedo at 550 nm |
Jan2014