Estimating the sensitivity of radiative impacts of shallow, broken marine clouds to boundary layer aerosol size distribution parameter uncertainties for evaluation of satellite retrieval requirements

Abstract

A proposed objective of the planned Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem (ACE) satellite mission is to provide constraints on climate model representation of aerosol effects on clouds by retrieving profiles of aerosol number concentration, effective variance, and effective radius over the 0.1-1-μm radius range under humidified ambient conditions with 500-m vertical resolution and uncertainties of 100%, 50%, and 10%, respectively. Shallow, broken marine clouds provide an example of conditions where boundary layer aerosol properties would be retrieved in clear-sky gaps. To quantify the degree of constraint that proposed retrievals might provide on cloud radiative forcing (CRF) simulated by climate models under such conditions, dry aerosol size distribution parameters are independently varied here in large-eddy simulations of three wellestablished modeling case studies. Using the rudimentary available aerosol specifications, it is found that relative changes of total dry aerosol properties in simulations can be used as a proxy for relative changes of ambient aerosol properties targeted by ACE retrievals. The sensitivity of simulated daytime shortwave CRF to the proposed uncertainty in retrieved aerosol number concentration is 215 W m-2 in the overcast limit, roughly a factor of 2 smaller than a simple analytic estimate owing primarily to aerosol-induced reductions in simulated liquid water path across this particular set of case studies. The CRF sensitivity to proposed uncertainties in retrieved aerosol effective variance and effective radius is typically far smaller, with no corresponding analytic estimate. Generalization of the results obtained here using only three case studies would require statistical analysis of relevant meteorological and aerosol observations and quantification of observational and model uncertainties and biases. © 2011 American Meteorological Society.