Efficient In‐Cloud Removal of Aerosols by Deep Convection
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- Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO USA, Earth System Research Laboratory National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder CO USA, Institute for Environment and Climate Research, Jinan University Guangzhou China
- Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO USA, Earth System Research Laboratory National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder CO USA
- Earth System Research Laboratory National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder CO USA
- Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO USA, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO USA
- Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research Universities Space Research Association Columbia MD USA
- Atmospheric Chemistry Division National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder CO USA
- College of Global Change and Earth System Science Beijing Normal University Beijing China
- Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO USA, Earth System Research Laboratory National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder CO USA, Now at the Faculty of Physics University of Vienna Vienna Austria
- School of Earth and Space Sciences University of Science and Technology of China Hefei China
Abstract Convective systems dominate the vertical transport of aerosols and trace gases. The most recent in situ aerosol measurements presented here show that the concentrations of primary aerosols including sea salt and black carbon drop by factors of 10 to 10,000 from the surface to the upper troposphere. In this study we show that the default convective transport scheme in the National Science Foundation/Department of Energy Community Earth System Model results in a high bias of 10–1,000 times the measured aerosol mass for black carbon and sea salt in the middle and upper troposphere. A modified transport scheme, which considers aerosol activation from entrained air above the cloud base and aerosol‐cloud interaction associated with convection, dramatically improves model agreement with in situ measurements suggesting that deep convection can efficiently remove primary aerosols. We suggest that models that fail to consider secondary activation may overestimate black carbon's radiative forcing by a factor of 2.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 1491930
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1816944; OSTI ID: 1491933
- Journal Information:
- Geophysical Research Letters, Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 46; ISSN 0094-8276
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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