| 1. |
- Acosta Navarro, Juan Camilo, et al.
(författare)
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Amplification of Arctic warming by past air pollution reductions in Europe
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nature Geoscience. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 1752-0894 .- 1752-0908. ; 9:4, s. 277-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Arctic region is warming considerably faster than the rest of the globe(1), with important consequences for the ecosystems(2) and human exploration of the region(3). However, the reasons behind this Arctic amplification are not entirely clear(4). As a result of measures to enhance air quality, anthropogenic emissions of particulate matter and its precursors have drastically decreased in parts of the Northern Hemisphere over the past three decades(5). Here we present simulations with an Earth system model with comprehensive aerosol physics and chemistry that show that the sulfate aerosol reductions in Europe since 1980 can potentially explain a significant fraction of Arctic warming over that period. Specifically, the Arctic region receives an additional 0.3Wm(-2) of energy, and warms by 0.5 degrees C on annual average in simulations with declining European sulfur emissions in line with historical observations, compared with a model simulation with fixed European emissions at 1980 levels. Arctic warming is amplified mainly in fall and winter, but the warming is initiated in summer by an increase in incoming solar radiation as well as an enhanced poleward oceanic and atmospheric heat transport. The simulated summertime energy surplus reduces sea-ice cover, which leads to a transfer of heat from the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere. We conclude that air quality regulations in the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean and atmospheric circulation, and Arctic climate are inherently linked.
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| 2. |
- Acosta Navarro, Juan Camilo, 1983-
(författare)
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Anthropogenic influence on climate through changes in aerosol emissions from air pollution and land use change
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Particulate matter suspended in air (i.e. aerosol particles) exerts a substantial influence on the climate of our planet and is responsible for causing severe public health problems in many regions across the globe. Human activities have altered the natural and anthropogenic emissions of aerosol particles through direct emissions or indirectly by modifying natural sources. The climate effects of the latter have been largely overlooked. Humans have dramatically altered the land surface of the planet causing changes in natural aerosol emissions from vegetated areas. Regulation on anthropogenic and natural aerosol emissions have the potential to affect the climate on regional to global scales. Furthermore, the regional climate effects of aerosol particles could potentially be very different than the ones caused by other climate forcers (e.g. well mixed greenhouse gases). The main objective of this work was to investigate the climatic effects of land use and air pollution via aerosol changes.Using numerical model simulations it was found that land use changes in the past millennium have likely caused a positive radiative forcing via aerosol climate interactions. The forcing is an order of magnitude smaller and has an opposite sign than the radiative forcing caused by direct aerosol emissions changes from other human activities. The results also indicate that future reductions of fossil fuel aerosols via air quality regulations may lead to an additional warming of the planet by mid-21st century and could also cause an important Arctic amplification of the warming. In addition, the mean position of the intertropical convergence zone and the Asian monsoon appear to be sensitive to aerosol emission reductions from air quality regulations. For these reasons, climate mitigation policies should take into consideration aerosol air pollution, which has not received sufficient attention in the past.
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| 3. |
- Acosta Navarro, Juan C., et al.
(författare)
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Future response of temperature and precipitation to reduced aerosol emissions as compared with increased greenhouse gas concentrations
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Climate. - 0894-8755 .- 1520-0442. ; 30:3, s. 939-954
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Experiments with a climate model (NorESM1) were performed to isolate the effects of aerosol particles and greenhouse gases on surface temperature and precipitation in simulations of future climate. The simulations show that by 2025-2049, a reduction of aerosol emissions from fossil fuels following a maximum technically feasible reduction (MFR) scenario could lead to a global and Arctic warming of 0.26 K and 0.84 K, respectively; as compared with a simulation with fixed aerosol emissions at the level of 2005. If fossil fuel emissions of aerosols follow a current legislation emissions (CLE) scenario, the NorESM1 model simulations yield a non-significant change in global and Arctic average surface temperature as compared with aerosol emissions fixed at year 2005. The corresponding greenhouse gas effect following the RCP4.5 emission scenario leads to a global and Arctic warming of 0.35 K and 0.94 K, respectively.The model yields a marked annual average northward shift in the inter-tropical convergence zone with decreasing aerosol emissions and subsequent warming of the northern hemisphere. The shift is most pronounced in the MFR scenario but also visible in the CLE scenario. The modeled temperature response to a change in greenhouse gas concentrations is relatively symmetric between the hemispheres and there is no marked shift in the annual average position of the inter-tropical convergence zone. The strong reduction in aerosol emissions in MFR also leads to a net southward cross-hemispheric energy transport anomaly both in the atmosphere and ocean, and enhanced monsoon circulation in Southeast and East Asia causing an increase in precipitation over a large part of this region.
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| 4. |
- Acosta Navarro, Juan Camilo
(författare)
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Historical anthropogenic radiative forcing of changes in biogenic secondary organic aerosol
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Human activities have lead to changes in the energy balance of the Earth and the global climate. Changes in atmospheric aerosols are the second largest contributor to climate change after greenhouse gases since 1750 A.D. Land-use practices and other environmental drivers have caused changes in the emission of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) well before 1750 A.D, possibly causing climate effects through aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions. Two numerical emission models LPJ-GUESS and MEGAN were used to quantify the changes in aerosol forming BVOC emissions in the past millennium. A chemical transport model of the atmosphere (GEOS-Chem-TOMAS) was driven with those BVOC emissions to quantify the effects on radiation caused by millennial changes in SOA.The specific objectives of this licentiate thesis are: 1) to understand what drove the changes in aerosol-forming BVOC emissions (i.e. isoprene, monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes) and to quantify these changes; 2) to calculate for the first time the combined historical aerosol direct and aerosol-cloud albedo effects on radiation from changing BVOC emissions through SOA formation; 3) to investigate how important the biological climate feedback associated to BVOC emissions and SOA formation is from a global climate perspective.We find that global isoprene emissions decreased after 1800 A.D. by about 12% - 15%. This decrease was dominated by losses of natural vegetation, whereas monoterpene and sesquiterpene emissions increased by about 2% - 10%, driven mostly by rising surface air temperatures. From 1000 A.D. to 1800 A.D, isoprene, monoterpene and sesquiterpene emissions decline by 3% - 8% driven by both, natural vegetation losses, and the moderate global cooling between the medieval climate anomaly and the little ice age. The millennial reduction in BVOC emissions lead to a 0.5% to 2% reduction in climatically relevant aerosol particles (> 80 nm) and cause a direct radiative forcing between +0.02 W/m² and +0.07 W/m², and an indirect radiative forcing between -0.02 W/m² and +0.02 W/m². The suggested biological climate feedback seems to be too small to have observable consequences on the global climate in the recent past.
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| 5. |
- Bourgeois, Quentin, et al.
(författare)
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Aerosol transport over the Andes from the Amazon Basin to the remote Pacific Ocean : A multiyear CALIOP assessment
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres. - 2169-897X .- 2169-8996. ; 120:16, s. 8411-8425
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Six years (200702012) of data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) satellite instrument were used to investigate the vertical distribution and transport of aerosols over the tropical South American continent and the southeast Pacific Ocean. The multiyear aerosol extinction assessment indicates that aerosols, mainly biomass burning particles emitted during the dry season in the Amazon Basin, are lifted in significant amounts over the Andes. The aerosols are mainly transported in the planetary boundary layer between the surface and 2 km altitude with an aerosol extinction maximum near the surface. During the transport toward the Andes, the aerosol extinction decreases at a rate of 0.02 km(-1) per kilometer of altitude likely due to dilution and deposition processes. Aerosols reaching the top of the Andes, at altitudes typically between 4 and 5 km, are entrained into the free troposphere (FT) over the southeast Pacific Ocean. A comparison between CALIOP observations and ERA-Interim reanalysis data indicates that during their long-range transport over the tropical Pacific Ocean, these aerosols are slowly transported toward the marine boundary layer by the large-scale subsidence at a rate of 0.4 cm s(-1). The observed vertical/horizontal transport ratio is 0.700.8 m km(-1) Continental aerosols linked to transport over the Andes can be traced on average over 4000 km away from the continent indicating an aerosol residence time of 809 days in the FT over the Pacific Ocean. The FT aerosol optical depth (AOD) above the Pacific Ocean near South American coast accounts on average for 6% and 25% of the total AOD during the season of low and high biomass burning, respectively. This result shows that, during the biomass burning season, continental aerosols largely influence the AOD over the remote southeast Pacific Ocean. Overall, FT AOD decrease exponentially with the distance to continental sources at a rate of about 10% per degree of longitude over the Pacific Ocean.
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| 6. |
- Bourgeois, Quentin, et al.
(författare)
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How much of the global aerosol optical depth is found in the boundary layer and free troposphere?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 18:10, s. 7709-7720
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The global aerosol extinction from the CALIOP space lidar was used to compute aerosol optical depth (AOD) over a 9-year period (2007-2015) and partitioned between the boundary layer (BL) and the free troposphere (FT) using BL heights obtained from the ERA-Interim archive. The results show that the vertical distribution of AOD does not follow the diurnal cycle of the BL but remains similar between day and night highlighting the presence of a residual layer during night. The BL and FT contribute 69 and 31 %, respectively, to the global tropospheric AOD during daytime in line with observations obtained in Aire sur l'Adour (France) using the Light Optical Aerosol Counter (LOAC) instrument. The FT AOD contribution is larger in the tropics than at mid-latitudes which indicates that convective transport largely controls the vertical profile of aerosols. Over oceans, the FT AOD contribution is mainly governed by long-range transport of aerosols from emission sources located within neighboring continents. According to the CALIOP aerosol classification, dust and smoke particles are the main aerosol types transported into the FT. Overall, the study shows that the fraction of AOD in the FT - and thus potentially located above low-level clouds - is substantial and deserves more attention when evaluating the radiative effect of aerosols in climate models. More generally, the results have implications for processes determining the overall budgets, sources, sinks and transport of aerosol particles and their description in atmospheric models.
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| 7. |
- Bourgeois, Quentin, et al.
(författare)
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Ubiquity and impact of thin mid-level clouds in the tropics
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Clouds are crucial for Earth's climate and radiation budget. Great attention has been paid to low, high and vertically thick tropospheric clouds such as stratus, cirrus and deep convective clouds. However, much less is known about tropospheric mid-level clouds as these clouds are challenging to observe in situ and difficult to detect by remote sensing techniques. Here we use Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) satellite observations to show that thin mid-level clouds (TMLCs) are ubiquitous in the tropics. Supported by high-resolution regional model simulations, we find that TMLCs are formed by detrainment from convective clouds near the zero-degree isotherm. Calculations using a radiative transfer model indicate that tropical TMLCs have a cooling effect on climate that could be as large in magnitude as the warming effect of cirrus. We conclude that more effort has to be made to understand TMLCs, as their influence on cloud feedbacks, heat and moisture transport, and climate sensitivity could be substantial.
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| 8. |
- Boy, M., et al.
(författare)
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Interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere, and ecosystems at northern high latitudes
- 2019
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 19:3, s. 2015-2061
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Nordic Centre of Excellence CRAICC (Cryosphere-Atmosphere Interactions in a Changing Arctic Climate), funded by NordForsk in the years 2011-2016, is the largest joint Nordic research and innovation initiative to date, aiming to strengthen research and innovation regarding climate change issues in the Nordic region. CRAICC gathered more than 100 scientists from all Nordic countries in a virtual centre with the objectives of identifying and quantifying the major processes controlling Arctic warming and related feedback mechanisms, outlining strategies to mitigate Arctic warming, and developing Nordic Earth system modelling with a focus on short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), including natural and anthropogenic aerosols. The outcome of CRAICC is reflected in more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications, most of which are in the CRAICC special issue of the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. This paper presents an overview of the main scientific topics investigated in the centre and provides the reader with a state-of-the-art comprehensive summary of what has been achieved in CRAICC with links to the particular publications for further detail. Faced with a vast amount of scientific discovery, we do not claim to completely summarize the results from CRAICC within this paper, but rather concentrate here on the main results which are related to feedback loops in climate change-cryosphere interactions that affect Arctic amplification.
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| 9. |
- Bulatovic, Ines, et al.
(författare)
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Aerosol Indirect Effects in Marine Stratocumulus : The Importance of Explicitly Predicting Cloud Droplet Activation
- 2019
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Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - 0094-8276 .- 1944-8007. ; 46:6, s. 3473-3481
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate models generally simulate a unidirectional, positive liquid water path (LWP) response to increasing aerosol number concentration. However, satellite observations and large-eddy simulations show that the LWP may either increase or decrease with increasing aerosol concentration, influencing the overall magnitude of the aerosol indirect effect (AIE). We use large-eddy simulation to investigate the LWP response of a marine stratocumulus cloud and its dependence on different parameterizations for obtaining cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC). The simulations confirm that the LWP response is not always positiveregardless of CDNC treatment. However, the AIE simulated with the model version with prescribed CDNC is almost 3 times larger compared to the version with prognostic CDNC. The reason is that the CDNC in the prognostic scheme varies in time due to supersaturation fluctuations, collection, and other microphysical processes. A substantial spread in simulated AIE may thus arise simply due to the CDNC treatment. Plain Language Summary Our poor understanding of aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions (aerosol indirect effects) results in a major uncertainty in estimates of anthropogenic aerosol forcing. In climate models, the cloud water response to an increased aerosol number concentration may be especially uncertain as models simplify, or do not account for, processes that affect the cloud droplet number concentration and the total amount of cloud water. In this study, we employ large-eddy simulation to explore how different model descriptions for obtaining the number concentration of cloud droplets influences the cloud water response of a marine stratocumulus cloud and thus the simulated aerosol indirect effect. Our simulations show a qualitatively similar cloud water response regardless of model description: the total amount of cloud water increases first and then decreases with increasing aerosol concentration. However, the simulated aerosol indirect effect is almost 3 times as large when the number concentration of cloud droplets is prescribed compared to when it is dependent on the calculated supersaturation and other microphysical processes such as collisions between cloud droplets. Our findings show that a relatively simple difference in the treatment of the number concentration of cloud droplets in climate models may result in a significant spread in the simulated aerosol indirect effect.
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| 10. |
- Chiacchio, Marc, et al.
(författare)
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On the links between meteorological variables, aerosols, and tropical cyclone frequency in individual ocean basins
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 122:2, s. 802-822
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A generalized linear model based on Poisson regression has been used to assess the impact of environmental variables modulating tropical cyclone frequency in six main cyclone development areas: the East Pacific, West Pacific, North Atlantic, North Indian, South Indian, and South Pacific. The analysis covers the period 1980-2009 and focuses on widely used meteorological parameters including wind shear, sea surface temperature, and relative humidity from different reanalyses as well as aerosol optical depth for different compounds simulated by the Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport model. Circulation indices are also included. Cyclone frequency is obtained from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship. A strong link is found between cyclone frequency and the relative sea surface temperature, Atlantic Meridional Mode, and wind shear with significant explained log likelihoods in the North Atlantic of 37%, 27%, and 28%, respectively. A significant impact of black carbon and organic aerosols on cyclone frequency is found over the North Indian Ocean, with explained log likelihoods of 27%. A weaker but still significant impact is found for observed dust aerosols in the North Atlantic with an explained log likelihood of 11%. Changes in lower stratospheric temperatures explain 28% of the log likelihood in the North Atlantic. Lower stratospheric temperatures from a subset of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models properly simulate the warming and subsequent cooling of the lower stratosphere that follows a volcanic eruption but underestimates the cooling by about 0.5 degrees C.
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