Model-Observation Comparisons of Biomass Burning Smoke and Clouds Over the Southeast Atlantic Ocean
Abstract
From August through October, in the SE Atlantic a plume of biomass burning smoke from central Africa overlays a relatively persistent stratocumulus-to-cumulus cloud deck. These smoke aerosols are believed to have significant climate forcing via aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud interactions, though both the magnitude and sign of this forcing is highly uncertain. This is due to large model spread in simulated aerosol and cloud properties and, until now, a sparsity of observations to constrain the models. Here we will present a comparison of both aerosol and cloud properties over the region using data from the first deployment of the NASA ORACLES (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS) field experiment (August-September 2016). We examine both horizontal and geographic variations in a range of aerosol and cloud properties and their position relative to each other, since the degree to which aerosols and clouds coincide both horizontally and vertically is perhaps the greatest source of uncertainty in their climate forcing.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A11C1907D
- Keywords:
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- 0321 Cloud/radiation interaction;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3355 Regional modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES