Aerosols and underlying clouds lead to warming
Nature Geoscience
2009년2월23일

Aerosols that collect at the top of the atmosphere exert a greater influence on warming when there are clouds located beneath them, suggests a paper online in Nature Geoscience. Aerosols, such as those produced from biomass burning, can alter the radiative balance of the Earth by reflecting and absorbing solar radiation. Whether they exert a net warming or cooling effect depends upon the reflectivity of the underlying surface.
Duli Chand and colleagues used satellite data to quantify the warming effect of aerosols that were carried over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. They found that the greater the cloud coverage below the aerosol layers, the more the aerosols warm the atmosphere. This relationship is nearly linear, making it possible to define a critical point where aerosols switch from exerting a net cooling effect to a net warming effect. They estimate that when this relationship between aerosols and underlying clouds is taken into account, regional warming is three times greater than otherwise predicted.
doi: 10.1038/ngeo437
리서치 하이라이트
-
3월4일
Environment: Reservoirs account for more than half of water storage variabilityNature
-
3월2일
Evolution: Neanderthals may have heard just like usNature Ecology & Evolution
-
3월2일
Geoscience: Earth’s atmosphere may return to low-levels of oxygen in one billion yearsNature Geoscience
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature