Aerosols affect the climate system by changing cloud characteristics in many ways. They act as cloud condensation and ice nuclei, they may inhibit freezing and they could have an influence on the hydrological cycle. While the cloud albedo…
Atmospheric Sciences
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Aerosols serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and thus have a substantial effect on cloud properties and the initiation of precipitation. Large concentrations of human-made aerosols have been reported to both decrease and increase rainfall as a…
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Using the climate change experiments generated for the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this study examines some aspects of the changes in the hydrological cycle that are robust across the models. These responses…
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The climate feedbacks in coupled oceanatmosphere models are compared using a coordinated set of twenty-first-century climate change experiments. Water vapor is found to provide the largest positive feedback in all models and its strength is…
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Emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and of reactive gases such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, which lead to the formation of secondary pollutants including aerosol particles and tropospheric…
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Atmospheric aerosol particles serve as condensation nuclei for the formation of both, cloud droplets and atmospheric ice particles. As a result, they exert a substantial influence on the microphysical properties of water and ice clouds, which in…
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It is thought that changes in the concentration of cloud-active aerosol can alter the precipitation efficiency of clouds, thereby changing cloud amount and, hence, the radiative forcing of the climate system. Despite decades of research, it has…
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Black carbon in soot is the dominant absorber of visible solar radiation in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic sources of black carbon, although distributed globally, are most concentrated in the tropics where solar irradiance is highest. Black carbon is…
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Processes in the climate system that can either amplify or dampen the climate response to an external perturbation are referred to as climate feedbacks. Climate sensitivity estimates depend critically on radiative feedbacks associated with water…
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Clouds developing in a polluted environment tend to have more numerous but smaller droplets. This property may lead to suppression of precipitation and longer cloud lifetime. Absorption of incoming solar radiation by aerosols, however, can reduce…
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This chapter assesses the capacity of the global climate models used elsewhere in this report for projecting future climate change. Confi dence in model estimates of future climate evolution has been enhanced via a range of advances since the IPCC…
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Climate variability in the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere (SH) is dominated by the SH annular mode, a large-scale pattern of variability characterized by fluctuations in the strength of the circumpolar vortex. We present evidence that recent…
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We examine the Earth's energy balance since 1950, identifying results that can be obtained without using global climate models. Important terms that can be constrained using only measurements and radiative transfer models are ocean heat content,…
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The NCEP and NCAR are cooperating in a project (denoted ''reanalysis'') to produce a 40-year record of global analyses of atmospheric fields in support of the needs of the research and climate monitoring communities. This effort involves the…
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Measurements and models show that enhanced aerosol concentrations can augment cloud albedo not only by increasing total droplet cross-sectional area, but also by reducing precipitation and thereby increasing cloud water content and cloud coverage.…
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Recent measurements demonstrate that the "background" stratospheric aerosol layer is persistently variable rather than constant, even in the absence of major volcanic eruptions. Several independent data sets show that stratospheric aerosols have…
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Awareness and a partial understanding of most of the interactive processes in the Earth system that govern climate and climate change predate the IPCC, often by many decades. A deeper understanding and quantifi cation of these processes and their…
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This paper reviews the many developments in estimates of the direct and indirect global annual mean radiative forcing due to present-day concentrations of anthropogenic tropospheric aerosols since Inter governmental Panel on Climate Change 1996. The…
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There is increasing evidence that the amount of solar radiation incident at the Earth's surface is not stable over the years but undergoes significant decadal variations. Here I review the evidence for these changes, their magnitude, their possible…
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