Microphysical complexity of black carbon particles restricts their warming potential
-
1.
Peking University
-
2.
Nankai University
-
3.
Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
-
4.
Stanford University
-
5.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Black carbon (BC) strongly absorbs solar radiation, but its warming effect on climate is poorly quantified. A key challenge is to accurately assess BC light absorption after BC is mixed with non-BC components. However, there has consistently been a large observation-modeling gap in BC light absorption estimation, reflecting the insufficient understanding of realistic BC complexity. Here, we conduct comprehensive in situ measurements of BC single-particle microphysics, e.g., size, coating amounts, density, and shape, along with optical closure calculation. Specifically, the observed particle-to-particle heterogeneities in size and coating and the non-spherical BC shape only explain the lower observed BC absorption by ∼20% and ∼30%, respectively. A remaining gap for fully aged spherical BC-containing particles is related to the off-center BC-core position. The global climate model assessment shows that fully accounting for the observed BC complexity in the aerosol microphysical representation reduces the global BC direct radiative forcing by up to 23%.
Copyright and License
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. CC-BY-NC license.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFC3701000 to X.-F.H.), the Science and Technology Plan of Shenzhen Municipality (JCYJ20200109120401943 to X.-F.H.), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42175123 to J.P.).
Contributions
Conceptualization, J.P., L.-Y.H., and Y.W.; methodology, X.-F.H., Y.P., J.W., Y.W., J.P., and L.-Y.H.; data analysis, X.-F.H., Y.P., J.W., J.P., Y.W., X.-Y.L., M.-X.T., Y.C., Z.M., T.F., J.Z., L.-M.C., and C.L.; visualization, Y.P., J.W., and Y.W.; writing—original draft, X.-F.H., Y.P., J.W., J.P., and Y.W.; writing—review and editing, J.P., Y.W., L.-Y.H., X.-F.H., and J.H.S.
Supplemental Material
- Document S1. Notes S1–S3, Figures S1–S21, and Tables S1 and S2.
- Document S2. Article plus supplemental information.
Data Availability
Data for the figures in the main text have been deposited at Zenodo under the https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10208500 and are publicly available as of the date of publication. Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request.
Code Availability
The original code of the CESM model used in this study is available at https://www2.cesm.ucar.edu/models/cesm1.2/. Custom code for this work is available from the lead contact upon reasonable request.
Files
Additional details
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 42175123
- Accepted
-
2023-12-04Accepted
- Available
-
2023-12-27Published online
- Available
-
2024-01-19Version of record
- Publication Status
- Published