Pollution / Cloud Interactions
Contact: Jonathan Jiang
Summary
Aerosols (small particles of dust or soot, or small droplets of sulphate solution or organic liquids) can affect the Earth's radiation budget and climate in two important ways: directly and indirectly. Aerosols can absorb incoming sunlight and also reflect it back to space. This is called the aerosol 'direct' effect. Aerosols also indirectly affect climate by modifying clouds and precipitation when they act as cloud condensation nuclei (i.e., particles provide surfaces on which cloud droplets can form). This is called the aerosol indirect effect. Measuring aerosol indirect effect is challenging, because aerosols cannot be easily detected by satellite sensors when they are inside clouds. One way to solve this problem is to use carbon monoxide (CO) to infer the presence of aerosols since they both are produced by incomplete combustion that occurs, for example, in fires. CO can be measured by MLS inside high clouds, because the microwave wavelengths observed by MLS are larger than the typical cloud particle size. Once MLS measurements identified whether the clouds are clean or dirty by the amount of CO concentration they have, other data from the 'A-train' satellite instruments, such as cloud particle size from Aqua MODIS and precipitation from TRMM, can be used to examine the aerosol indirect effect. Changes of cloud particle size and precipitation due to aerosols are important information for climate studies, and for understanding the response of the climate system to changes in air pollution.
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MLS-related publications concerning pollution / cloud interactions
2011
- Huang, L., "Geographic and seasonal distributions of CO transport pathways and their roles in determining CO centers in the upper troposphere", vol doi:10.5194/acpd-11-32423-2011, num 11, 2011. Reprint
- Wu, L., "Regional simulations of deep convection and biomass burning over South America: 2. Biomass burning aerosol effects on clouds and precipitation", vol doi:10.1029/2011JD016106, num 116, 2011. Reprint
2010
- Bhawar, R.L., "Study of successive contrasting monsoons (2001-2002) in terms of aerosol variability over a tropical station Pune, India", num 10, 2010. Reprint
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