For many, the word “aerosol” might conjure thoughts of hairspray or spray paint. More accurately, though, aerosols are simply particles found in the atmosphere. They can be human-made, like from car exhaust or biomass burning, or naturally occurring, from sources such as volcanic eruptions or sea spray.
Aerosols account for one of the greater uncertainties in understanding the Earth’s climate and, through a cooling effect, mask a significant portion of the warming caused by the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
One unresolved issue in understanding aerosol-climate interactions is why, for a unit change in the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, the surface temperature change is higher for aerosols than for greenhouse gases. This is known as climate sensitivity. The conventional understanding is that the higher climate sensitivity to aerosols is due to their higher concentrations over land surfaces, which heat up and cool down faster than oceans.
In a recently published paper in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, Yale researchers demonstrate that it is not only the geographic distribution of aerosols that explains the higher climate sensitivity but also the specific local-scale interactions with the land surface.
Read more at Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
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