Journal article
Biomass burning aerosols in most climate models are too absorbing
- Abstract:
- Uncertainty in the representation of biomass burning (BB) aerosol composition and optical properties in climate models contributes to a range in modeled aerosol effects on incoming solar radiation. Depending on the model, the top-of-the-atmosphere BB aerosol effect can range from cooling to warming. By relating aerosol absorption relative to extinction and carbonaceous aerosol composition from 12 observational datasets to nine state-of-the-art Earth system models/chemical transport models, we identify varying degrees of overestimation in BB aerosol absorptivity by these models. Modifications to BB aerosol refractive index, size, and mixing state improve the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5) agreement with observations, leading to a global change in BB direct radiative effect of −0.07 W m−2, and regional changes of −2 W m−2 (Africa) and −0.5 W m−2 (South America/Temperate). Our findings suggest that current modeled BB contributes less to warming than previously thought, largely due to treatments of aerosol mixing state.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.9MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-020-20482-9
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Article number:
- 277
- Publication date:
- 2021-01-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-12-02
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1147987
- Local pid:
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pubs:1147987
- Deposit date:
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2020-12-07
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Brown et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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