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Matsui & Pielke 2006
Matsui, T. and Pielke, R.A. (2006). Measurement-based estimation of the spatial gradient of aerosol radiative forcing. Geophysical Research Letters 33: doi: 10.1029/2006GL025974. issn: 0094-8276.

This paper diagnoses the spatial mean and the spatial gradient of the aerosol radiative forcing in comparison with those of well-mixed green-house gases (GHG). Unlike GHG, aerosols have much greater spatial heterogeneity in their radiative forcing. The heterogeneous diabatic heating can modulate the gradient in horizontal pressure field and atmospheric circulations, thus altering the regional climate. For this, we diagnose the Normalized Gradient of Radiative Forcing (NGoRF), as a fraction of the present global heterogeneous insolation attributed to human activity. Although the GHG has a larger forcing (+1.7 Wm-2) as measured than those of aerosol direct (-1.59 Wm-2) and possible indirect effect (-1.38 Wm-2) in terms of a spatially averaged top-of-atmosphere value, the aerosol direct and indirect effects have far greater NGoRF values (~0.18) than that of GHG (~0.003).

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906), Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Cloud/radiation interaction, Atmospheric Processes, Regional modeling, Atmospheric Processes, Clouds and aerosols
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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