Aerosol radiative forcing for Asian continental outflow

Abstract Asian aerosols in elevated layers over the Pacific Ocean were sampled with NASA wire-impactors and a FSSP optical particle spectrometer-probe aboard the NASA DC-8 aircraft in early March 1994. Strong variations in aerosol properties, primarily aerosol concentration, lead to derived mid-visible extinctions between 0.003 and 0.5/km. FSSP data usually identified two size-modes. The larger ‘coarse mode’ (radii of 1–3 μm) was assumed to be dust. The composition of the smaller ‘accumulation mode’ (radii of 0.1–0.3 μm) was based on the analysis of the wire-impactor samples, as significant amounts of soot reduce mid-visible single scattering albedos to the 0.87–0.92 range. Radiative forcing simulations investigated the impact of Asian outflow aerosol on atmospheric radiative fluxes and heating rates. Only events with larger optical depths were important. In those events the solar attenuation of the smaller size mode dominated the net-flux losses at the surface, with values similar those of urban-polluted and/or biomass burning aerosol types (as observed during the TARFOX and INDOEX field experiments). In contrast, changes to net-fluxes at the top of the atmosphere (ToA) for outflow cases are less negative—primarily due to the added greenhouse effect of the dust component. For the climate of the Earth-Atmosphere-System, ToA net-flux losses are considered a cooling, ToA net-flux gains are associated with warming. Weak cooling is determined for the Asian outflow cases under cloud-free conditions. The addition of a reported 50% cloud cover below the aerosol layer causes a switch to slight warming.