https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2022/egusphere-2022-1127/
*Authors* Jianhao Zhang and Graham Feingold *Received*: 20 Oct 2022 *Discussion started*: 28 Oct 2022 (Preprint) Abstract *Marine stratocumuli cool the Earth effectively* due to their *high reflectance of incoming solar radiation, *and persistent occurrence. The susceptibility of cloud albedo to droplet number concentration perturbations depends strongly on large-scale meteorological conditions. Studies focused on the meteorological dependence of cloud adjustments often overlook the covariability among meteorological factors and their geographical and temporal variability. We use 8 years of satellite observations sorted by day and geographical location to show the global distribution of *marine low cloud albedo susceptibility. *We find an annual mean cloud brightening potential for most of the regions, more pronounced over subtropical coastal regions. Weak cloud darkening potential in the annual mean is evident over the remote SE Pacific and SE Atlantic. We show that large-scale meteorological fields from the ERA5 reanalysis data, including lower-tropospheric stability, free-tropospheric relative humidity, sea surface temperature, and boundary layer depth, have distinct covariabilities over each of the eastern subtropical ocean basins where marine stratocumulus prevail. This leads to markedly different monthly evolution in albedo susceptibility over each basin. Moreover, we find that basin-specific regional relationships between key meteorological factors and albedo susceptibilities are absent in a global analysis. Our results stress the importance of considering the geographical distinctiveness of temporal meteorological covariability *when scaling up the local-to-global response of cloud albedo to aerosol perturbations.* *Source: EUGsphere* -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAOyeF5vrvkFjw_R4yZihUGY%2BY1E%2BGbGQgsrxQmF34s7bS5C7UQ%40mail.gmail.com.
