Data · dataset · 2026
A new method for diagnosing effective radiative forcing from aerosol-cloud interactions in climate models
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
Aerosolâcloud interactions (ACIs) are a leading source of uncertainty in estimates of the historical effective radiative forcing (ERF).
Description
One reason for this uncertainty is the difficulty in estimating the ERF from aerosolâcloud interactions (ERFaci) in climate models, which typically requires multiple calls to the radiation code. Most commonly used methods also cannot disentangle the contributions from different processes to ERFaci.
Here, we develop a new, computationally efficient method for estimating the shortwave (SW) ERFaci from liquid clouds using histograms of monthly averaged cloud fraction partitioned by cloud droplet effective radius (re) and liquid water path (LWP). Multiplying the histograms with SW cloud radiative kernels gives the total SW ERFaci from liquid clouds, which can be decomposed into contributions from the Twomey effect, LWP adjustments, and cloud fraction (CF) adjustments.
Read the rest (2 more)
We test the method with data from five CMIP6-era models, using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite instrument simulator to generate the histograms. Our method gives similar total SW ERFaci estimates to other established methods in regions of prevalent liquid cloud and indicates that the Twomey effect, LWP adjustments, and CF adjustments have contributed â0.34â±â0.23, â0.22â±â0.13, and â0.09â±â0.11âWâmâ2, respectively, to the effective radiative forcing of the climate since 1850 in the ensemble mean (95â% confidence).
These results demonstrate that widespread adoption of a MODIS reâLWP joint histogram diagnostic would allow the SW ERFaci and its components to be quickly and accurately diagnosed from climate model outputs, a crucial step for reducing uncertainty in the historical ERF.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7n01bxn ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/a-new-method-for-diagnosing-effective-radiative-forcin… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=13720ea5-974b-42dc-b694-80f83c271… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Atmospheric sciences 70% · Climate model simulation 65% · Imaging 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 10 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | 13720ea5-974b-42dc-b694-80f83c271a2d | 10 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3701 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (70%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[method].local:method:climate-model | enrichment · data ucar edu | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (65%) |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:imaging | enrichment · data ucar edu | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (75%) |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |