High sensitivity of Indian summer monsoon to Middle East dust absorptive properties
Name
High sensitivity.pdf
Size
3.44 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c2494bcc9c21c75fac64e54a1910463a
Author(s)
Jin, Qinjian
Yang, Zong-Liang
Wei, Jiangfeng
Date Issued
July 2016
Journal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Jin, Qinjian, Zong-Liang Yang, and Jiangfeng Wei. “High Sensitivity of Indian Summer Monsoon to Middle East Dust Absorptive Properties.” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 30690.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The absorptive properties of dust aerosols largely determine the magnitude of their radiative impacts on the climate system. Currently, climate models use globally constant values of dust imaginary refractive index (IRI), a parameter describing the dust absorption efficiency of solar radiation, although it is highly variable. Here we show with model experiments that the dust-induced Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall differences (with dust minus without dust) change from −9% to 23% of long-term climatology as the dust IRI is changed from zero to the highest values used in the current literature. A comparison of the model results with surface observations, satellite retrievals, and reanalysis data sets indicates that the dust IRI values used in most current climate models are too low, tending to significantly underestimate dust radiative impacts on the ISM system. This study highlights the necessity for developing a parameterization of dust IRI for climate studies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Global Change Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep30690
