EGU2020-8381
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-8381
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Weaker cooling by aerosols due to dust-pollution interactions

Klaus Klingmueller1, Vlassis Karydis2, Sara Bacer3, Georgiy Stenchikov4, and Jos Lelieveld1
Klaus Klingmueller et al.
  • 1Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany (k.klingmueller@mpic.de)
  • 2Institute of Energy and Climate Research, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
  • 3LEGI, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble, France
  • 4Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

The interactions between aeolian dust and anthropogenic air pollution, notably chemical ageing of mineral dust and coagulation of dust and pollution particles, modify the atmospheric aerosol burden. Since the aerosol particles can act as cloud condensation nuclei, this not only affects the radiative transfer directly via aerosol radiation interactions, but also indirectly through cloud adjustments. We study both radiative effects using the global ECHAM/MESSy atmospheric chemistry-climate model (EMAC) which combines the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy) with the European Centre/Hamburg (ECHAM) climate model. Our simulations show that the dust-pollution interactions reduce the cloud water and hence the reflection of solar radiation. The associated climate warming outweighs the cooling which the dust-pollution interactions exert through the direct radiative effect. In total, this results in a net warming by dust-pollution interactions which we estimate to moderate the negative global anthropogenic aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere by more than 0.1 W / m².

How to cite: Klingmueller, K., Karydis, V., Bacer, S., Stenchikov, G., and Lelieveld, J.: Weaker cooling by aerosols due to dust-pollution interactions, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-8381, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-8381, 2020.

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