Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC) Science Plan

Technical Report · Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1232658· OSTI ID:1232658

Zuidema, P ^[1]; Chiu, C ^[2]; Fairall, CW ^[3]; Ghan, SJ ^[4]; Kollias, P ^[5]; McFarguhar, GM; Mechem, DB ^[6]; Romps, DM ^[7]; Wong, H; Yuter, SE ^[8]; Alvarado, MJ ^[9]; DeSzoeke, SP; Feingold, G ^[10]; Haywood, JM; Lewis, ER ^[11]; McComiskey, A ^[12]; Redemann, J ^[13]; Turner, DD ^[12]; Wood, R ^[14]; Zhu, P ^[15]

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1. University of Miami
2. University of Reading
3. NOAA - Environmental Technology Laboratory
4. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
5. Stony Brook University
6. University of Kansas
7. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
8. North Carolina State University
9. Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc.
10. NOAA - Earth System Research Laboratory
11. Brookhaven National Laboratory
12. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
13. NASA - Ames Research Center
14. University of Washington
15. Florida International University

Southern Africa is the world’s largest emitter of biomass-burning (BB) aerosols. Their westward transport over the remote southeast Atlantic Ocean colocates some of the largest atmospheric loadings of absorbing aerosol with the least examined of the Earth’s major subtropical stratocumulus decks. Global aerosol model results highlight that the largest positive top-of-atmosphere forcing in the world occurs in the southeast Atlantic, but this region exhibits large differences in magnitude and sign between reputable models, in part because of high variability in the underlying model cloud distributions. Many uncertainties contribute to the highly variable model radiation fields: the aging of shortwave-absorbing aerosol during transport, how much of the aerosol mixes into the cloudy boundary layer, and how the low clouds adjust to smoke-radiation and smoke-cloud interactions. In addition, the ability of the BB aerosol to absorb shortwave radiation is known to vary seasonally as the fuel type on land changes.

• Research Organization: DOE Office of Science Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-7601830
• OSTI ID: 1232658
• Report Number(s): DOE/SC-ARM-14-037
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English