Aerosol Effect on Cloud Droplet Size Monitored from Satellite

Bréon, François‐Marie; Tanré, D.; Generoso, S.

doi:10.1126/science.1066434

Cited by 398 publications

(370 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In the recent years several set of satellite data have fostered a comprehensive description of the temporal and spatial variability of different aerosol species, from anthropogenic aerosols ) to desert dust (Léon and Legrand, 2003). The monitoring of aerosols from space has also been widely used during this last decade for the evaluation of aerosol influence on global climate change through the impact on the Earth-atmosphere radiation budget (Boucher and Tanré, 2000;Bréon et al, 2002). Primary aerosol quantity derived from space borne remote sensors operating in the solar spectrum is the aerosol optical thickness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of aerosol pollution events in France using ground-based and POLDER-2 satellite data

et al. 2006

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Abstract. We analyze the relationship between daily fine particle mass concentration (PM2.5) and columnar aerosol optical thickness derived from the Polarization and Directionality of Earth's Reflectances (POLDER) satellite sensor. The study is focused over France during the POLDER-2 lifetime between April and October 2003. We have first compared the POLDER derived aerosol optical thickness (AOT) with integrated volume size distribution derived from ground-based Sun Photometer observations. The good correlation (R=0.72) with sub-micron volume fraction indicates that POLDER derived AOT is sensitive to the fine aerosol mass concentration. Considering 1974 match-up data points over 28 fine particle monitoring sites, the POLDER-2 derived AOT is fairly well correlated with collocated PM2.5 measurements, with a correlation coefficient of 0.55. The correlation coefficient reaches a maximum of 0.80 for particular sites. We have analyzed the probability to find an appropriate air quality category (AQC) as defined by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from POLDER-2 AOT measurements. The probability can be up to 88.8% (±3.7%) for the "Good" AQC and 89.1% (±3.6%) for the "Moderate" AQC.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of aerosol pollution events in France using ground-based and POLDER-2 satellite data

et al. 2006

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“…[4] Recently, special attention has been dedicated to cloud interactions with desert aerosol particles [Rosenfeld et al, 2001;Bréon et al, 2002;DeMott et al, 2003;Kawamoto and Nakajima, 2003;Huang et al, 2006]. Measurements of the complex refractive index of atmospheric dust aerosols in central Asia [Sokolik et al, 1993] suggested that significant absorption of solar radiation could exist due to the considerable range of values for the imaginary part of the refractive index.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Satellite‐based assessment of possible dust aerosols semi‐direct effect on cloud water path over East Asia

Huang

Lin

Minnis

et al. 2006

Geophysical Research Letters

267

157

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[1] The semi-direct effects of dust aerosols are analyzed over eastern Asia using 2 years (June 2002 to June 2004 The results show that the water path of dust-contaminated clouds is considerably smaller than that of dust-free clouds. The mean ice water path (IWP) and liquid water path (LWP) of dusty clouds are less than their dust-free counterparts by 23.7% and 49.8%, respectively. The long-term statistical relationship derived from ISCCP also confirms that there is significant negative correlation between dust storm index and ISCCP cloud water path (CWP). These results suggest that dust aerosols warm clouds, increase the evaporation of cloud droplets and further reduce the CWP, the so-called semi-direct effect. The semi-direct effect may play a role in cloud development over arid and semi-arid areas of East Asia and contribute to the reduction of precipitation.

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“…For low, warm clouds, these changes will tend to add an additional net cooling to the climate system. Both satellite and in-situ observations have been used to determine the first indirect effect (Nakajima et al, 2001;Bréon et al, 2002;Feingold et al, 2003;Penner et al, 2004;Kaufmann et al, 2005). But it has been difficult to determine the 2nd indirect effect, because changes in the observed liquid water path, cloud height and cloud cover are influenced by large-scale and cloud-scale dynamics and thermodynamics as well as by the influence of aerosols on cloud microphysics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model intercomparison of indirect aerosol effects

et al. 2006

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Abstract. Modeled differences in predicted effects are increasingly used to help quantify the uncertainty of these effects. Here, we examine modeled differences in the aerosol indirect effect in a series of experiments that help to quantify how and why model-predicted aerosol indirect forcing varies between models. The experiments start with an experiment in which aerosol concentrations, the parameterization of droplet concentrations and the autoconversion scheme are all specified and end with an experiment that examines the predicted aerosol indirect forcing when only aerosol sources are specified. Although there are large differences in the predicted liquid water path among the models, the predicted aerosol first indirect effect for the first experiment is rather similar, about −0.6 Wm −2 to −0.7 Wm −2 . Changes to the autoconversion scheme can lead to large changes in the liquid water path of the models and to the response of the liquid water path to changes in aerosols. Adding an autoconversion scheme that depends on the droplet concentration caused a larger (negative) change in net outgoing shortwave radiation compared to the 1st indirect effect, and the increase varied from only 22% to more than a factor of three. The change in net shortwave forcing in the models due to varying the autoconversion scheme depends on the liquid water content of the clouds as well as their predicted droplet concentrations, and both increases and decreases in the net shortwave forcing can occur when autoconversion schemes are changed. The parameterization of cloud fraction within models is not sensitive to the aerosol concentration, and, therefore, the response of the modeled cloud fraction within the present models appears to be smaller than that which would be associated Correspondence to: J. E. Penner (penner@umich.edu) with model "noise". The prediction of aerosol concentrations, given a fixed set of sources, leads to some of the largest differences in the predicted aerosol indirect radiative forcing among the models, with values of cloud forcing ranging from −0.3 Wm −2 to −1.4 Wm −2 . Thus, this aspect of modeling requires significant improvement in order to improve the prediction of aerosol indirect effects.

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Aerosol Effect on Cloud Droplet Size Monitored from Satellite

Cited by 398 publications

References 24 publications

Characterization of aerosol pollution events in France using ground-based and POLDER-2 satellite data

Characterization of aerosol pollution events in France using ground-based and POLDER-2 satellite data

Satellite‐based assessment of possible dust aerosols semi‐direct effect on cloud water path over East Asia

Model intercomparison of indirect aerosol effects

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