Atmospheric Aerosols and Climate Impacts

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerosols".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2023) | Viewed by 2820

Special Issue Editors

Zhongfa Aviation Institute of Beihang University, Hangzhou 311115, China
Interests: ageing mechanism of aerosol particles; individual particle analysis; aerosol sources, composition, and chemistry
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Guest Editor
Zhongfa Aviation Institute of Beihang University, Hangzhou 311115, China
Interests: atmospheric chemistry; secondary organic aerosol; brown carbon; mass spectrometry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Atmospheric aerosols are nano- to microsized solid and liquid particles suspended in the air, such as dust, smoke, and soot. Aerosols play vital roles in the atmospheric cycle, climate, and public health. From the perspective of their climate effects, aerosols can have both direct and indirect effects on the Earth’s climate system. Atmospheric aerosols can directly affect climate by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, leading to changes in the amount of energy that reaches the Earth’s surface. They can also act as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei, indirectly impact climate by altering cloud and ice formation, and affect the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface and the amount of solar radiation that is absorbed or reflected. Despite decades of extensive research, the behavior and impact of atmospheric aerosols still remain highly uncertain in comparison to other known climate drivers. This uncertainty poses a significant challenge to our ability to distinguish the roles of aerosols and greenhouse gases in past climate change, in turn preventing us from reliably predicting future climate. Therefore, to advance our understanding of the role of atmospheric aerosols in climate change, we are pleased to announce a call for papers for the Special Issue on “Atmospheric Aerosols and Climate Impacts”. This issue aims to provide a platform for researchers to share their latest findings and advancements in this area. In order to promote a diverse range of perspectives and approaches to this topic, we welcome submissions from researchers in both field measurements and simulation studies. We encourage researchers to submit papers on the following topics or any other relevant research associated with atmospheric aerosols and their impact on climate.

Topics of interest for the Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • The investigation of physical and chemical properties of ambient aerosols;
  • Aerosol formation mechanisms;
  • The ice-nucleating ability of particles;
  • The impact of aerosols on climate.

Dr. Jingsha Xu
Dr. Lei Liu
Dr. Shanshan Tang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • atmospheric aerosols
  • chemical properties
  • formation mechanism
  • cloud condensation nuclei
  • ice nuclei
  • climate impacts

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 4757 KiB  
Article
Retrieval of Aerosol Optical Depth and FMF over East Asia from Directional Intensity and Polarization Measurements of PARASOL
by Shupeng Wang, Li Fang, Weishu Gong, Weihe Wang and Shihao Tang
Atmosphere 2024, 15(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15010006 - 20 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1099
Abstract
The advantages of performing aerosol retrieval with multi-angle, multi-spectral photopolarimetric measurements over intensity-only measurements come from this technique’s sensitivity to aerosols’ microphysical properties, such as their particle size, shape, and complex refraction index. In this study, an extended LUT (Look Up Table) algorithm [...] Read more.
The advantages of performing aerosol retrieval with multi-angle, multi-spectral photopolarimetric measurements over intensity-only measurements come from this technique’s sensitivity to aerosols’ microphysical properties, such as their particle size, shape, and complex refraction index. In this study, an extended LUT (Look Up Table) algorithm inherited from a previous work based on the assumption of surface reflectance spectral shape invariance is proposed and applied to PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) measurements to retrieve aerosols’ optical properties including aerosol optical depth (AOD) and aerosol fine-mode fraction (FMF). Case studies conducted over East China for different aerosol scenes are investigated. A comparison between the retrieved AOD regional distribution and the corresponding MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) C6 AOD products shows similar spatial distributions in the Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, China’s mega city cluster) region. The PARASOL AOD retrievals were compared against the AOD measurements of seven AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) stations in China to evaluate the performance of the retrieval algorithm. In the fine-particle-dominated regions, lower RMSEs were found at Beijing and Hefei urban stations (0.16 and 0.18, respectively) compared to those at other fine-particle-dominated AERONET stations, which can be attributed to the assumption of surface reflectance spectral shape invariance that has significant advantages in separating the contribution of surface and aerosol scattering in urban areas. For the FMF validation, an RMSE of 0.23, a correlation of 0.57, and a bias of −0.01 were found. These results show that the algorithm performs reasonably in distinguishing the contribution of fine and coarse particles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Aerosols and Climate Impacts)
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28 pages, 3619 KiB  
Article
Anthropic Settlements’ Impact on the Light-Absorbing Aerosol Concentrations and Heating Rate in the Arctic
by Niccolò Losi, Piotr Markuszewski, Martin Rigler, Asta Gregorič, Griša Močnik, Violetta Drozdowska, Przemysław Makuch, Tymon Zielinski, Paulina Pakszys, Małgorzata Kitowska, Amedeo Manuel Cefalì, Irene Gini, Andrea Doldi, Sofia Cerri, Pietro Maroni, Ezio Bolzacchini and Luca Ferrero
Atmosphere 2023, 14(12), 1768; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14121768 - 30 Nov 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1401
Abstract
Light-absorbing aerosols (LAA) impact the atmosphere by heating it. Their effect in the Arctic was investigated during two summer Arctic oceanographic campaigns (2018 and 2019) around the Svalbard Archipelago in order to unravel the differences between the Arctic background and the local anthropic [...] Read more.
Light-absorbing aerosols (LAA) impact the atmosphere by heating it. Their effect in the Arctic was investigated during two summer Arctic oceanographic campaigns (2018 and 2019) around the Svalbard Archipelago in order to unravel the differences between the Arctic background and the local anthropic settlements. Therefore, the LAA heating rate (HR) was experimentally determined. Both the chemical composition and high-resolution measurements highlighted substantial differences between the Arctic Ocean background (average eBC concentration of 11.7 ± 0.1 ng/m3) and the human settlements, among which the most impacting appeared to be Tromsø and Isfjorden (mean eBC of 99.4 ± 3.1 ng/m3). Consequently, the HR in Isfjorden (8.2 × 10−3 ± 0.3 × 10−3 K/day) was one order of magnitude higher than in the pristine background conditions (0.8 × 10−3 ± 0.9 × 10−5 K/day). Therefore, we conclude that the direct climate impact of local LAA sources on the Arctic atmosphere is not negligible and may rise in the future due to ice retreat and enhanced marine traffic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Aerosols and Climate Impacts)
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