Smaller desert dust cooling effect estimated from analysis of dust size and abundance
Name
1710.07630.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
2.23 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
80057e58afb724b70f7c8f9099f74309
Author(s)
Kok, Jasper F.
Ridley, David Andrew
Zhou, Qing
Miller, Ron L.
Zhao, Chun
Heald, Colette L.
Ward, Daniel S.
Albani, Samuel
Haustein, Karsten
Date Issued
March 2017
Journal
Nature Geoscience
Publisher
Springer Nature America, Inc
Citation
Kok, Jasper F., et al. "Smaller desert dust cooling effect estimated from analysis of dust size and abundance." Nature Geoscience 10 (2017) 274–278.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Desert dust aerosols affect Earth's global energy balance through direct interactions with radiation, and through indirect interactions with clouds and ecosystems. But the magnitudes of these effects are so uncertain that it remains unclear whether atmospheric dust has a net warming or cooling effect on global climate. Consequently, it is still uncertain whether large changes in atmospheric dust loading over the past century have slowed or accelerated anthropogenic climate change, or what the effects of potential future changes in dust loading will be. Here we present an analysis of the size and abundance of dust aerosols to constrain the direct radiative effect of dust. Using observational data on dust abundance, in situ measurements of dust optical properties and size distribution, and climate and atmospheric chemical transport model simulations of dust lifetime, we find that the dust found in the atmosphere is substantially coarser than represented in current global climate models. As coarse dust warms the climate, the global dust direct radiative effect is likely to be less cooling than the 1/40.4 W m2 estimated by models in a current global aerosol model ensemble. Instead, we constrain the dust direct radiative effect to a range between 0.48 and +0.20 W m 2, which includes the possibility that dust causes a net warming of the planet.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/NGEO2912
