Effects of anthropogenic aerosol and greenhouse gas emissions on Northern Hemisphere monsoon precipitation: mechanisms and uncertainty

Northern Hemisphere Land monsoon precipitation (NHLM) exhibits multidecadal variability, decreasing over the second half of the 20st century and increasing after the 1980s. We use a novel combination of CMIP6 simulations and several large ensembles to assess the relative roles of drivers of monsoon precipitation trends, analyzing the effects of anthropogenic aerosol (AA), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and natural forcing. We decomposed summer global monsoon precipitation anomalies into dynamic and thermodynamic terms to assess the drivers of precipitation trends. We show that the drying trends are likely to be mainly due to increased AA emissions, which cause shifts of the atmospheric circulation and a decrease in moisture advection. Increases in GHG emissions cause monsoon precipitation to increase due to strengthened moisture advection. The uncertainty in summer monsoon precipitation trends is explored using three initial condition large ensembles. AA emissions have strong controls on monsoon precipitation trends, exceeding the effects of internal climate variability. However, uncertainties in the effects of external forcings on monsoon precipitation are high for specific periods and monsoon domains, and due to differences in how models simulate shifts in atmospheric circulation. The effect of AA emissions is uncertain over the northern African monsoon domain, due to differences among climate models in simulating the effects of AA emissions on net shortwave radiation over the North Atlantic Ocean.

Effective radiative forcing of anthropogenic aerosols in E3SMv1: historical changes, causality, decomposition, and parameterization sensitivities

The effective radiative forcing of anthropogenic aerosols (ERFaer) is an important measure of the anthropogenic aerosol effects simulated by a global climate model. Here we analyze ERFaer simulated by the E3SMv1 atmosphere model using both century-long free-running atmosphere-land simulations and short nudged simulations. We relate the simulated ERFaer to characteristics of the aerosol composition and optical properties, and evaluate the relationships between key aerosol and cloud properties. In terms of historical changes from the year 1870 to 2014, our results show that the global mean anthropogenic aerosol burden and optical depth increase during the simulation period as expected, but the regional averages show large differences in the temporal evolution. The largest regional differences are found in the emission-induced evolution of the burden and optical depth of the sulfate aerosol: a strong decreasing trend is seen in the Northern Hemisphere high-latitude region after around 1970, while a continued increase is simulated in the tropics. Consequently, although the global mean anthropogenic aerosol burden and optical depth increase from 1870 to 2014, the ERFaer magnitude does not increase after around year 1970. The relationships between key aerosol and cloud properties (relative changes between preindustrial and present-day conditions) also show evident changes after 1970, diverging from the linear relationships exhibited for the period from 1870 to 2014. The ERFaer in E3SMv1 is relatively large compared to the recently published multi-model estimates; the primary reason is the large indirect aerosol effect (i.e., through aerosol-cloud interactions). Compared to other models, E3SMv1 features a stronger sensitivity of the cloud droplet effective radius to changes in the cloud droplet number concentration. Large sensitivity is also seen in the liquid cloud optical depth, which is determined by changes in both the effective radius and liquid water path. Aerosol-induced changes in liquid and ice cloud properties in E3SMv1 are found to have a strong correlation, as the evolution of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols affects both the liquid cloud formation and the homogeneous ice nucleation in cirrus clouds. The ERFaer estimates in E3SMv1 for the shortwave and longwave components are sensitive to the parameterization changes in both liquid and ice cloud processes. When the parameterization of ice cloud processes is modified, the top-of-atmosphere forcing changes in the shortwave and longwave components largely offset each other, so the net effect is negligible. This suggests that, to reduce the magnitude of the net ERFaer, it would be more effective to reduce the anthropogenic aerosol effect through liquid or mixed-phase clouds.

Estimation of the anthropogenic aerosol emission effect on the rate of summer warming in Europe

A relationship between aerosol air pollutions and summer air temperatures in Europe was studied. High correlation coefficients between the latitudinal distributions of the zone-averaged trends of the mentioned parameters were found. The potential effects of decrease in the aerosol emission on the cloud optical depth, in the air temperature, and the amount of precipitation in the territory of Europe were estimated on the basis of the obtained regression equations. It was shown that due to the aerosol emission decrease, the average summer temperature in Europe in 2000–2020 could increase by 0.53 °С, which is ~73 % of total summer warming in the region. The empirical estimates obtained in the work were confirmed by the satellite observation data and the numerical calculations of changes in radiation balance components at the top of the atmosphere. It was shown that the radiation emission decrease in the territory of Europe could increase the average radiation balance in Europe in summer months by 2.27 W/m², which is ~65 % of its total change. The increase in the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere during the same period contributed much less to the observed change in the radiation balance (17.5 %), which supports the hypothesis about the dominant role of aerosols in summer warming in Europe.

The role of anthropogenic aerosols in the anomalous cooling from 1960 to 1990 in the CMIP6 Earth system models

The Earth system models (ESMs) that participated in the sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) tend to simulate excessive cooling in surface air temperature (TAS) between 1960 and 1990. The anomalous cooling is pronounced over the Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes, coinciding with the rapid growth of anthropogenic sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, the primary precursor of atmospheric sulfate aerosols. Structural uncertainties between ESMs have a larger impact on the anomalous cooling than internal variability. Historical simulations with and without anthropogenic aerosol emissions indicate that the anomalous cooling in the ESMs is attributed to the higher aerosol burden in these models. The aerosol forcing sensitivity, estimated as the outgoing shortwave radiation (OSR) response to aerosol concentration changes, cannot well explain the diversity of pothole cooling (PHC) biases in the ESMs. The relative contributions to aerosol forcing sensitivity from aerosol–radiation interactions (ARIs) and aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) can be estimated from CMIP6 simulations. We show that even when the aerosol forcing sensitivity is similar between ESMs, the relative contributions of ARI and ACI may be substantially different. The ACI accounts for between 64 % and 87 % of the aerosol forcing sensitivity in the models and is the main source of the aerosol forcing sensitivity differences between the ESMs. The ACI can be further decomposed into a cloud-amount term (which depends linearly on cloud fraction) and a cloud-albedo term (which is independent of cloud fraction, to the first order), with the cloud-amount term accounting for most of the inter-model differences.

Global and amplified land warming trends over the past 40+ years are entirely human-driven.

<p class="p1">The role of external (radiative) forcing factors and internal unforced (ocean) low-frequency variations in the instrumental global temperature record are still hotly debated. More recent findings point towards a larger contribution from changes in external forcing, but the jury is still out. While the estimation of the human-induced total global warming fraction since pre-industrial times is fairly robust and mostly independent of multidecadal internal variability, this is not necessarily the case for key regional features such as Arctic amplification or enhanced warming over continental land areas. Accounting for the slow global temperature adjustment after strong volcanic eruptions, the spatially heterogeneous nature of anthropogenic aerosol forcing and known biases in the sea surface temperature record, almost all of the multidecadal fluctuations observed over at least the last 160+ years can be explained without a relevant role for internal variability. Using a two-box response model framework, I will demonstrate that not only multidecadal variability is very likely a forced response, but warming trends over the past 40+ years are entirely attributable to human factors. Repercussions for amplifed European (or D-A-CH for that matter) warming and associated implications for extreme weather events are discussed. Further consideration is given to the communications aspect of such critical results as well as the question of wider societal impacts.</p>

Impact of reduced emissions on direct and indirect aerosol radiative forcing during COVID–19 lockdown in Europe

Aerosols influence the Earth’s energy balance through direct radiative effects and indirectly by altering the cloud micro-physics. Anthropogenic aerosol emissions dropped considerably when the global COVID–19 pandemic resulted in severe restraints on mobility, production, and public life in spring 2020. Here we assess the effects of these reduced emissions on direct and indirect aerosol radiative forcing over Europe, excluding contributions from contrails. We simulate the atmospheric com- position with the ECHAM5/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model in a baseline (business as usual) and a reduced emission scenario. The model results are compared to aircraft observations from the BLUESKY aircraft campaign performed in May/June 2020 over Europe. The model agrees well with most of the observations, except for sulfur dioxide, particulate sulfate and nitrate in the upper troposphere, likely due to a somewhat biased representation of stratospheric aerosol chemistry and missing information about volcanic eruptions which could have influenced the campaign. The comparison with a business as usual scenario shows that the largest relative differences for tracers and aerosols are found in the upper troposphere, around the aircraft cruise altitude, due to the reduced aircraft emissions, while the largest absolute changes are present at the surface. We also find an increase in shortwave radiation of 0.327 ± 0.105 Wm−2 at the surface in Europe for May 2020, solely attributable to the direct aerosol effect, which is dominated by decreased aerosol scattering of sunlight, followed by reduced aerosol absorption, caused by lower concentrations of inorganic and black carbon aerosols in the troposphere. A further in- crease in shortwave radiation from aerosol indirect effects was found to be much smaller than its variability. Impacts on ice crystal- and cloud droplet number concentrations and effective crystal radii are found to be negligible.

Strong control of effective radiative forcing by the spatial pattern of absorbing aerosol

Over the coming decades it is expected that the spatial pattern of anthropogenic aerosol will change dramatically and that the global composition of aerosols will become relatively more absorbing. However, despite this the climatic impact of the evolving spatial pattern of absorbing aerosol has received relatively little attention, in particular the impact of this pattern on global-mean effective radiative forcing. Here we use novel climate model experiments to show that the effective radiative forcing from absorbing aerosol varies strongly depending on their location, driven by rapid adjustments of clouds and circulation. Our experiments generate positive effective radiative forcing in response to aerosol absorption throughout the midlatitudes and most of the tropical regions and a strong ‘hot spot’ of negative effective radiative forcing in response to aerosol absorption over the Western tropical Pacific. We show that these diverse responses can be robustly attributed to changes in atmospheric dynamics and highlight the importance of this previously unknown ‘aerosol pattern effect’ for transient forcing from regional biomass-burning aerosol.

Distinct roles of land cover in regulating spatial variabilities of temperature responses to radiative effects of aerosols and clouds

Surface temperature responses to aerosol and cloud radiative perturbations are complicated by the underlying land surface processes. To disentangle this complexity, this study investigates the role of land surfaces in the radiative effects of aerosols and clouds on surface temperature from a terrestrial surface energy budget perspective using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model version 1.2.1 (CESM1.2.1). It is found that land cover enhances the spatial variation of the temperature response to aerosol direct radiative effects (DRE) and cloud radiative effects (CRE) during daytime and nighttime respectively while it reduces that of the temperature response to CRE during the daytime by collocation of local surface climate sensitivity and aerosol DRE and CRE. With identical anthropogenic aerosol emissions over eight major emission regions in the past, present and future projections including Brazil, China, East Africa, India, Indonesia, South Africa, the United States and Western Europe, local temperature responses to aerosol DRE (CRE) are more strongly regulated by land cover in the daytime (nighttime).