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Title: Aircraft-measured indirect cloud effects from biomass burning smoke in the Arctic and subarctic

Journal Article · · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online)
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [3];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [4];  [8];  [9];  [4]
  1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Oak Ridge Associated Univ., Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  3. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  4. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA (United States)
  5. National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo (Japan)
  6. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States)
  7. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); National Observatory of Athens, Athens (Greece); Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, Patras (Greece)
  8. Univ. of Oslo, Oslo (Norway); Univ. of Innsbruck, Innsbruck (Austria)
  9. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The incidence of wildfires in the Arctic and subarctic is increasing; in boreal North America, for example, the burned area is expected to increase by 200–300% over the next 50–100 years, which previous studies suggest could have a large effect on cloud microphysics, lifetime, albedo, and precipitation. However, the interactions between smoke particles and clouds remain poorly quantified due to confounding meteorological influences and remote sensing limitations. Here, we use data from several aircraft campaigns in the Arctic and subarctic to explore cloud microphysics in liquid-phase clouds influenced by biomass burning. Median cloud droplet radii in smoky clouds were ~40–60% smaller than in background clouds. Based on the relationship between cloud droplet number (Nliq) and various biomass burning tracers (BBt) across the multi-campaign data set, we calculated the magnitude of subarctic and Arctic smoke aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs, where ACI = (1/3) × dln(Nliq)/dln(BBt)) to be ~0.16 out of a maximum possible value of 0.33 that would be obtained if all aerosols were to nucleate cloud droplets. Interestingly, in a separate subarctic case study with low liquid water content (~0.02gm–3) and very high aerosol concentrations (2000–3000 cm–3) in the most polluted clouds, the estimated ACI value was only 0.05. In this case, competition for water vapor by the high concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) strongly limited the formation of droplets and reduced the cloud albedo effect, which highlights the importance of cloud feedbacks across scales. Using our calculated ACI values, we estimate that the smoke-driven cloud albedo effect may decrease local summertime short-wave radiative flux by between 2 and 4 Wm–2 or more under some low and homogeneous cloud cover conditions in the subarctic, although the changes should be smaller in high surface albedo regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we lastly explore evidence suggesting that numerous northern-latitude background Aitken particles can interact with combustion particles, perhaps impacting their properties as cloud condensation and ice nuclei.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
NNX12AC03G; NNX15AH33A; AC0576RL01830
OSTI ID:
1249367
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-112359
Journal Information:
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online), Vol. 16, Issue 2; ISSN 1680-7324
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 25 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (8)

Sources, Load, Vertical Distribution, and Fate of Wintertime Aerosols North of Svalbard From Combined V4 CALIOP Data, Ground-Based IAOOS Lidar Observations and Trajectory Analysis journal January 2018
Year-Round In Situ Measurements of Arctic Low-Level Clouds: Microphysical Properties and Their Relationships With Aerosols journal February 2019
Progress and Challenges in Quantifying Wildfire Smoke Emissions, Their Properties, Transport, and Atmospheric Impacts journal December 2019
Space‐Based Observations for Understanding Changes in the Arctic‐Boreal Zone journal January 2020
Effects of 20–100 nm particles on liquid clouds in the clean summertime Arctic journal January 2016
Biomass-burning impact on CCN number, hygroscopicity and cloud formation during summertime in the eastern Mediterranean journal January 2016
A satellite-based estimate of combustion aerosol cloud microphysical effects over the Arctic Ocean journal January 2018
Investigation of short-term effective radiative forcing of fire aerosols over North America using nudged hindcast ensembles journal January 2018

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