Aerosol indirect forcing in a global model with particle nucleation

By Minghuai Wang, J. Penner. 2008

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. The number concentration of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) formed as a result of anthropogenic emissions is a key uncertainty in the study of aerosol indirect forcing and global climate change. Here, we use a global aerosol model that includes an empirical boundary layer nucleation mechanism, the use of primary-emitted sulfate particles to represent sub-grid scale nucleation, as well as binary homogeneous nucleation to explore how nucleation affects the CCN concentration and the first aerosol indirect effect (AIE). The inclusion of the boundary layer nucleation scheme increases the global average CCN concentrations in the boundary layer by 31.4% when no primary-emitted sulfate particles are included and by 5.3% when they are included. Particle formation with the boundary layer nucleation scheme decreases the first indirect forcing over ocean, and increases the first indirect forcing over land when primary sulfate particles are included. This suggests that whether particle formation from aerosol nucleation increases or decreases aerosol indirect effects largely depends on the relative change of primary particles and SO2 emissions from the preindustrial to the present day atmosphere. Including primary-emitted sulfate particle significantly increases both the anthropogenic fraction of CCN concentrations and the first aerosol indirect forcing. The forcing from various treatments of aerosol nucleation ranges from −1.22 to −2.03 w/m2. This large variation shows the importance of better quantifying aerosol nucleation mechanisms for the prediction of CCN concentrations and aerosol indirect effects.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/94d0d225073523251b8cc3ea6dc779b5d8ccdf63

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atmospheric Science

In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Constraining cloud droplet number concentration in GCMs suppresses the aerosol indirect effect (2009, methodology): “Wang and Penner [2009] , in IMPACT-CAM, use a lower bound for CDNC of 20 cm � 3 and motivate this by a possible”
JournalofGeophysicalResearch : Atmospheres Causes and importance of new particle formation in the present-day and preindustrial atmospheres (2017, unknown): “This supports previous studies by, for example, Westervelt et al. [2014] and Spracklen et al.”
Uncertainty in global CCN concentrations from uncertain aerosol nucleation and primary emission rates (2008, background): “2%) to the addition of activation nucleation in the boundary layer (with A=1×10−6 s−1) was also seen by Wang and Penner (2008) in their simulations that also included primary sulfate particle emissions. However, when they did not include the primary sulfate particles, the sensitivity of CCN(0.2%) to”
Aerosol indirect effects in a multi-scale aerosol-climate model PNNL-MMF (2011, result): “It has been shown in several previous studies (Ghan et al., 2001; Hoose et al., 2009; Wang and Penner, 2009) that the larger lower limits usually lead to smaller aerosol indirect effects.”
Cloud condensation nuclei production associated with atmospheric nucleation: a synthesis based on existing literature and new results (2012, background): “, 2009; Pierce and Adams, 2009; Yu and Luo, 2009; Luo and Yu, 2011a), while others examined also changes in cloud droplet number concentrations and resulting climatic variables (Makkonen et al., 2009; Wang and Penner, 2009; Kazil et al., 2010; Merikanto et al., 2010).”
Aerosol indirect effects – general circulation model intercomparison and evaluation with satellite data (2009, methodology): “The original NCAR CAM3 model predicted both cloud liquid mass and cloud ice mass (Boville et al., 2006) and is updated with an additional prognostic equation for cloud liquid droplet number concentration (Wang and Penner, 2009b).”
Processes Controlling the Seasonal Cycle of Arctic Aerosol Number and Size Distributions (2015, unknown): “…2008), GISS-TOMAS (Adams and Seinfeld, 2002; Pierce and Adams,20 2009), GLOMAP (Spracklen et al., 2005a, b; 2008; Mann et al., 2012), GLOMAP-Mode (Mann et al., 2010, 2012; L. A. Lee et al., 2013), GEOS-Chem-APM (Yu and Luo, 2009; Yu, 2011) and IMPACT (Herzog et al., 2004; Wang and Penner, 2009).”
Total aerosol effect: radiative forcing or radiative flux perturbation? (2009, background): “…Dufresne et al. (2005), Ming et al. (2005), Chen and Penner(2005), Takemura et al.(2005), Quaas and Boucher(2005), Penner et al.(2006), Kvalevag and Myhre(2007), Quaas et al. (2008), Lebsock et al.(2008), Wang and Penner(2009), Storelvmo et al.(2009), Rotstayn and Liu(2009), Haerter et al.(2009)”
Simulation of particle size distribution with a global aerosol model: contribution of nucleation to aerosol and CCN number concentrations (2009, background): “…pointed out in the Introduction, several recent studies used the empirical formula to represent boundary layer nucleation while employed binary homogeneous nucleation theory for nucleation calculation above boundary layer (e.g., Spracklen et al., 2008; Makkonen et al., 2009; Wang and Penner, 2009).”
Impact of nucleation on global CCN (2009, background): “While the atmospheric abundance of primary particles is essentially determined 5 by the emission strength, the abundance of nucleated particles responds in complex ways to variations in precursor gases and existing particle concentrations (Gaydos et al., 2005; Spracklen et al., 2006; Jung et al., 20”