Lars Nieradzik
Researcher
Process-evaluation of forest aerosol-cloud-climate feedback shows clear evidence from observations and large uncertainty in models
Author
Summary, in English
Natural aerosol feedbacks are expected to become more important in the future, as anthropogenic aerosol emissions decrease due to air quality policy. One such feedback is initiated by the increase in biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions with higher temperatures, leading to higher secondary organic aerosol (SOA) production and a cooling of the surface via impacts on cloud radiative properties. Motivated by the considerable spread in feedback strength in Earth System Models (ESMs), we here use two long-term observational datasets from boreal and tropical forests, together with satellite data, for a process-based evaluation of the BVOC-aerosol-cloud feedback in four ESMs. The model evaluation shows that the weakest modelled feedback estimates can likely be excluded, but highlights compensating errors making it difficult to draw conclusions of the strongest estimates. Overall, the method of evaluating along process chains shows promise in pin-pointing sources of uncertainty and constraining modelled aerosol feedbacks.
Department/s
- Department of Physics
- LTH Profile Area: Aerosols
- eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
- MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system
- Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
Publishing year
2024-02-07
Language
English
Publication/Series
Nature Communications
Volume
15
Issue
1
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Topic
- Climate Research
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2041-1723