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The impacts of optical properties on radiative forcing due to dust aerosol
- Source :
- Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. 23:431-441
- Publication Year :
- 2006
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2006.
-
Abstract
- There are large uncertainties in the quantitative assessment of radiative effects due to atmospheric dust aerosol. The optical properties contribute much to those uncertainties. The authors perform several sensitivity experiments to estimate the impacts of optical characteristics on regional radiative forcing in this paper. The experiments involve in refractive indices, single scattering albedo, asymmetry factor and optical depth. An updated dataset of refractive indices representing East Asian dust and the one recommended by the World Meteorology Organization (WMO) are contrastively analyzed and used. A radiative transfer code for solar and thermal infrared radiation with detailed aerosol parameterization is employed. The strongest emphasis is on the refractive indices since other optical parameters strongly depend on it, and the authors found a strong sensitivity of radiative forcing on refractive indices. Studies show stronger scattering, weaker absorption and forward scattering of the East Asian dust particles at solar wavelengths, which leads to higher negative forcing, lower positive forcing and bigger net forcing at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) than that of the WMO dust model. It is also found that the TOA forcings resulting from these two dust models have opposite signs in certain regions, which implies the importance of accurate measurements of optical properties in the quantitative estimation of radiative forcing.
- Subjects :
- Cloud forcing
Atmospheric Science
Single-scattering albedo
Forcing (mathematics)
Radiative forcing
Atmospheric sciences
Aerosol
Atmospheric radiative transfer codes
Climatology
Radiative transfer
Environmental science
Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Physics::Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Optical depth
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 18619533 and 02561530
- Volume :
- 23
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........43c1b584d041037560f1b7081dbc913b