Black carbon radiative effects highly sensitive to emitted particle size when resolving mixing-state diversity

Nature Communications
Hitoshi MatsuiNatalie M Mahowald

Abstract

Post-industrial increases in atmospheric black carbon (BC) have a large but uncertain warming contribution to Earth's climate. Particle size and mixing state determine the solar absorption efficiency of BC and also strongly influence how effectively BC is removed, but they have large uncertainties. Here we use a multiple-mixing-state global aerosol microphysics model and show that the sensitivity (range) of present-day BC direct radiative effect, due to current uncertainties in emission size distributions, is amplified 5-7 times (0.18-0.42 W m-2) when the diversity in BC mixing state is sufficiently resolved. This amplification is caused by the lifetime, core absorption, and absorption enhancement effects of BC, whose variability is underestimated by 45-70% in a single-mixing-state model representation. We demonstrate that reducing uncertainties in emission size distributions and how they change in the future, while also resolving modeled BC mixing state diversity, is now essential when evaluating BC radiative effects and the effectiveness of BC mitigation on future temperature changes.

References

Sep 28, 2002·Science·Surabi MenonYunfeng Luo
Dec 31, 2003·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·James Hansen, Larissa Nazarenko
Oct 27, 2010·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·O Pechony, D T Shindell
Sep 26, 2014·Nature Communications·Øivind HodnebrogBjørn H Samset
Apr 2, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Jianfei PengRenyi Zhang
Aug 25, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Olivier BoucherRong Wang
May 17, 2017·Nature Communications·Nobuhiro MotekiYutaka Kondo
Nov 16, 2017·Journal of Geophysical Research. Atmospheres : JGR·Camilla Weum StjernApostolos Voulgarakis

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