Wood, Robert; Ackerman, Thomas; Rasch, Philip; Wanser, Kelly (2017): Could geoengineering research help answer one of the biggest questions in climate science? In: Earth's Future. DOI: 10.1002/2017EF000601
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000601/full Could geoengineering research help answer one of the biggest questions in climate science? * Accepted manuscript online: 22 June 2017 <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017EF000601/full#publication-hi story> Full publication history * DOI: 10.1002/2017EF000601 View/save citation <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/exportCitation/doi/10.1002/2017EF00 0601> * Cited by (CrossRef): 0 articles <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/refreshCitedBy?doi=10.1002/2017EF00 0601&refreshCitedByCounter=true> Check for updates * * <https://www.altmetric.com/details.php?domain=onlinelibrary.wiley.com&citati on_id=21274880> Abstract Anthropogenic aerosol impacts on clouds constitute the largest source of uncertainty in quantifying the radiative forcing of climate, and hinders our ability to determine Earth's climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas increases. Representation of aerosol-cloud interactions in global models is particularly challenging because these interactions occur on typically unresolved scales. Observational studies show influences of aerosol on clouds, but correlations between aerosol and clouds are insufficient to constrain aerosol forcing because of the difficulty in separating aerosol and meteorological impacts. In this commentary, we argue that this current impasse may be overcome with the development of approaches to conduct control experiments whereby aerosol particle perturbations can be introduced into patches of marine low clouds in a systematic manner. Such cloud perturbation experiments constitute a fresh approach to climate science and would provide unprecedented data to untangle the effects of aerosol particles on cloud microphysics and the resulting reflection of solar radiation by clouds. The control experiments would provide a critical test of high-resolution models that are used to develop an improved representation aerosol-cloud interactions needed to better constrain aerosol forcing in global climate models. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
