Observational evidence for aerosols increasing upper tropospheric humidity
Item
Title (Dublin Core)
Observational evidence for aerosols increasing upper tropospheric humidity
Description (Dublin Core)
Aerosol–cloud interactions are the largest source of uncertainty in the radiative forcing of the global climate. A phenomenon not included in the estimates of the total net forcing is the potential increase in upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) by anthropogenic aerosols via changes in the microphysics of deep convection. Using remote sensing data over the ocean east of China in summer, we show that increased aerosol loads are associated with an UTH increase of 2.2 ± 1.5 in units of relative humidity. We show that humidification of aerosols or other meteorological covariation is very unlikely to be the cause of this result, indicating relevance for the global climate. In tropical moist air such an UTH increase leads to a regional radiative effect of 0.5 ± 0.4 W m<sup>−2</sup>. We conclude that the effect of aerosols on UTH should be included in future studies of anthropogenic climate change and climate sensitivity.
Creator (Dublin Core)
Riuttanen, Laura
Bister, Marja
Kerminen, Veli-Matti
John, Viju O.
Sundström, Anu-Maija
Maso, Miikka
Räisänen, Jouni
Sinclair, Victoria A.
Makkonen, Risto
Xausa, Filippo
Leeuw, Gerrit
Kulmala, Markku
Date (Dublin Core)
2018-09-10
Type (Dublin Core)
Text
Format (Dublin Core)
application/pdf
Identifier (Dublin Core)
10.5194/acp-16-14331-2016
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/14331/2016/
Source (Dublin Core)
eISSN: 1680-7324
Language (Dublin Core)
eng
