Impact of aerosol-cloud interaction on aerosol effective radiative forcing revealed by a Random Forest Regression over CMIP6 data

Aerosol perturbations primarily affect albedo (Bellouin et al., 2019) by scattering a fraction of insolation back into space. Specifically, aerosol emissions enhance cloud formation and cloud cover, which directly increase albedo.

To investigate this effect, we analyze CMIP6 data from a set of experiments conducted using models with robust aerosol modules. Our focus is on variables such as cloud droplet number concentration, which reflect aerosol emissions, and cloud fraction, as well as their correlation with the shortwave radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere.

To achieve this, we apply a Random Forest Regression to the dataset, enabling a more precise quantification of the impact of aerosol-cloud interactions on the atmosphere’s radiative balance