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Predicting global atmospheric ice nuclei distributions and their impacts on climate

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/1n79h5946

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  • Knowledge of cloud and precipitation formation processes remains incomplete, yet global precipitation is predominantly produced by clouds containing the ice phase. Ice first forms in clouds warmer than −36 °C on particles termed ice nuclei. We combine observations from field studies over a 14-year period, from a variety of locations around the globe, to show that the concentrations of ice nuclei active in mixed-phase cloud conditions can be related to temperature and the number concentrations of particles larger than 0.5 μmin diameter. This new relationship reduces unexplained variability in ice nuclei concentrations at a given temperature from ~10³ to less than a factor of 10, with the remaining variability apparently due to variations in aerosol chemical composition or other factors. When implemented in a global climate model, the new parameterization strongly alters cloud liquid and ice water distributions compared to the simple, temperature-only parameterizations currently widely used. The revised treatment indicates a global net cloud radiative forcing increase of ~1 Wm⁻² for each order of magnitude increase in ice nuclei concentrations, demonstrating the strong sensitivity of climate simulations to assumptions regarding the initiation of cloud glaciation.
  • Keywords: aerosol indirect effects, climate forcing, ice nucleation
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  • DeMott, P. J., Prenni, A. J., Liu, X., Kreidenweis, S. M., Petters, M. D., Twohy, C. H., et al. (2010, June 22). Predicting global atmospheric ice nuclei distributions and their impacts on climate [Electronic version]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(25), 11217-11222. doi:10.1073/pnas.0910818107
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  • 107
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  • 25
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  • P.J.D., A.J.P. and S.M.K. acknowledge financial support for this work from the Office of Science (BER), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Atmospheric System Research Grant DE-FG02-09ER64772, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Modeling and Analysis Program (Grant NNG06GB60G), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant ATM-0611936. X.L. acknowledges the support for modeling simulations from DOE-BER and the DOE Climate Change Prediction Program (CCPP). The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for the DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract DE-AC06-76RLO 1830. Data used were collected under grants from the NSF, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University, DOE, and NASA. The Canadian Space Agency provided funding of the C3VP.
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