Data · dataset · 2026
black-carbon-aging-removal
Listed in ZivaHub
<p dir="ltr">Black carbon consists of light-absorbing particles produced by combustion that can heat the atmosphere.
Description
Its effects depend not only on the total amount but also on where the particles remain and how they change during transport. We combine observations from 21 deployments of 11 aircraft campaigns during 2008–2024 with global atmospheric simulations to investigate how changes in particle aging and removal by rain and snow affect black carbon distributions in polluted regions, fire plumes, and remote oceans.
The model reproduces the broad contrast between polluted and clean air but overestimates black carbon concentrations in East Asia and substantially underestimates them in elevated smoke layers over the southeast Atlantic. Reducing the tendency of selected particles to be removed by cloud water and ice increases the global amount of black carbon by about 15%, yet closes only about 1.7% of the smoke-layer concentration deficit and worsens the overestimate in East Asia.
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Weakening removal by rain and snow below clouds also increases the total amount but produces a different vertical response. Delaying the tested particle-aging transition mainly changes particle composition, with little effect on the total amount. In this study, the main regional contrasts persist when observation weights are changed or selected deployments are excluded, whereas assessments of the remote-ocean mean depend more strongly on sampling.
These results show that retaining more black carbon in the atmosphere does not necessarily improve its regional distribution. Apparently reasonable global amounts or mean concentrations can also conceal compensating errors across regions. Improving simulations requires examining how much black carbon is present, where it occurs, and which particles carry it, together with emissions, vertical transport, and cloud processes, to better understand its atmospheric distribution and climate implications.</p>
Links
Where it is published
- DOI doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.34022001.v4 ↗
DOI / persistent id · from zivahub uct ac za
Catalogue records · 1
- OAI-PMH record api.figshare.com/v2/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai%3Af… ↗
metadata API · from zivahub uct ac za
Topics
- From keywords
- Atmospheric aerosols · Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZivaHub | oai:figshare.com:article/34022001 | 5 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| access_level | source · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].anzsrc:field:370103 | mapping · zivahub uct ac za | vocabulary-mapper@1.0.0 | keywords['Atmospheric aerosols'] |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | /metadata/dc/description |
| license | source · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | /metadata/dc/rights |
| publication_date | source · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · zivahub uct ac za | connector:zivahub_uct_ac_za@1.0.0 | /metadata/dc/title |