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Assessment of the first indirect radiative effect of ammonium-sulfate-nitrate aerosols in East Asia

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Abstract

A physically based cloud nucleation parameterization was introduced into an optical properties/radiative transfer module incorporated with the off-line air quality modeling system Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS)-Models-3 Community Multi Scale Air Quality (CMAQ) to investigate the distribution features of the first indirect radiative effects of sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium-sulfate-nitrate (ASN) over East Asia for the years of 2005, 2010, and 2013. The relationship between aerosol particles and cloud droplet number concentration could be properly described by this parameterization because the simulated cloud fraction and cloud liquid water path were generally reliable compared with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrieved data. Simulation results showed that the strong effect of indirect forcing was mainly concentrated in Southeast China, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the Sea of Japan. The highest indirect radiative forcing of ASN reached −3.47 W m−2 over Southeast China and was obviously larger than the global mean of the indirect forcing of all anthropogenic aerosols. In addition, sulfate provided about half of the contribution to the ASN indirect forcing effect. However, the effect caused by nitrate was weak because the mass burden of nitrate was very low during summer, whereas the cloud fraction was the highest. The analysis indicated that even though the interannual variation of indirect forcing magnitude generally followed the trend of aerosol mass burden from 2005 to 2013, the cloud fraction was an important factor that determined the distribution pattern of indirect forcing. The heaviest aerosol loading in North China did not cause a strong radiative effect because of the low cloud fraction over this region.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2014CB953802), the “Strategic Priority Research Program (B)” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB05030105, XDB05030102, XDB05030103), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41475098 and 41205123), and the Russian Scientific Fund under grant 14-47-00049.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Xiao Han & Meigen Zhang

  2. Center for Excellence in Urban Atmospheric Environment, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China

    Meigen Zhang

  3. Laboratory of Atmospheric Gas Species, A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119017, Russia

    Andrei Skorokhod

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  1. Xiao Han
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Correspondence to Meigen Zhang.

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Han, X., Zhang, M. & Skorokhod, A. Assessment of the first indirect radiative effect of ammonium-sulfate-nitrate aerosols in East Asia. Theor Appl Climatol 130, 817–830 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1913-8

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