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A New Assessment of the Aerosol First Indirect Effect

Shao, Hongfei Florida State University
Liu, Guosheng Florida State University

Category: Aerosols

The aerosol first indirect effect is known to cool the Earth radiatively. However, its magnitude is very uncertain; large discrepancies exist among the observed values published in the literature. In this study, we first survey the published values of those parameters used for describing the first indirect effect. By analyzing the discrepancies among these values, we show that the first indirect effect has been overestimated by many investigators due to an improper parameter being used. Therefore, we introduce a more meaningful parameter to measure this effect. We estimated the first indirect effect using the new parameter based on observational data (mainly satellite data), and compared our value with those published in the literature. Through reconciling the discrepancies among the different values, we attempt to answer the question: how strong this effect is.

This poster will be displayed at the ARM Science Team Meeting.