Anthropogenic aerosol emissions lead to an increase in the amount of cloud condensation
nuclei and consequently an increase in cloud droplet number concentration and cloud albedo.
The corresponding negative radiative forcing due to aerosol cloud interactions (RFaci) is one
of the most uncertain radiative forcing terms as reported in the 5th Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here we show that previous
observation-based studies underestimate aerosol-cloud interactions because they used
measurements of aerosol optical properties that are not directly related to cloud formation
and are hampered by measurement uncertainties. We have overcome this problem by
the use of new polarimetric satellite retrievals of the relevant aerosol properties (aerosol
number, size, shape). The resulting estimate of RFaci = −1.14 Wm 2 (range between −0.84
and −1.72 Wm 2) is more than a factor 2 stronger than the IPCC estimate that includes also
other aerosol induced changes in cloud properties.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:72472 |
| Date | 22 October 2020 |
| Creators | Hasekamp, Otto P., Gryspeerdt, Edward, Quaas, Johannes |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10.1038/s41467-019-13372-2, 5405 |
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