Collaborative Research: Quantifying the Uncertainties of Aerosol Indirect Effects and Impacts on Decadal-Scale Climate Variability in NCAR CAM5 and CESM1
- Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
The goal of this proposed project is to assess the climatic importance and sensitivity of aerosol indirect effect (AIE) to cloud and aerosol processes and feedbacks, which include organic aerosol hygroscopicity, cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activation kinetics, Giant CCN, cloud-scale entrainment, ice nucleation in mixed-phase and cirrus clouds, and treatment of subgrid variability of vertical velocity. A key objective was to link aerosol, cloud microphysics and dynamics feedbacks in CAM5 with a suite of internally consistent and integrated parameterizations that provide the appropriate degrees of freedom to capture the various aspects of the aerosol indirect effect. The proposal integrated new parameterization elements into the cloud microphysics, moist turbulence and aerosol modules used by the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model version 5 (CAM5). The CAM5 model was then used to systematically quantify the uncertainties of aerosol indirect effects through a series of sensitivity tests with present-day and preindustrial aerosol emissions. New parameterization elements were developed as a result of these efforts, and new diagnostic tools & methodologies were also developed to quantify the impacts of aerosols on clouds and climate within fully coupled models. Observations were used to constrain key uncertainties in the aerosol-cloud links. Advanced sensitivity tools were developed and implements to probe the drivers of cloud microphysical variability with unprecedented temporal and spatial scale. All these results have been published in top and high impact journals (or are in the final stages of publication). This proposal has also supported a number of outstanding graduate students.
- Research Organization:
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0007145
- OSTI ID:
- 1365568
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-GIT-07145-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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