Articles | Volume 15, issue 14
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-7841-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-7841-2015
Research article
 | 
16 Jul 2015
Research article |  | 16 Jul 2015

Brown carbon aerosol in the North American continental troposphere: sources, abundance, and radiative forcing

J. Liu, E. Scheuer, J. Dibb, G. S. Diskin, L. D. Ziemba, K. L. Thornhill, B. E. Anderson, A. Wisthaler, T. Mikoviny, J. J. Devi, M. Bergin, A. E. Perring, M. Z. Markovic, J. P. Schwarz, P. Campuzano-Jost, D. A. Day, J. L. Jimenez, and R. J. Weber

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Cited articles

Andreae, M. O. and Gelencsér, A.: Black carbon or brown carbon? The nature of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 3131–3148, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-3131-2006, 2006.
Bahadur, R., Praveen, P. S., Xu, Y. Y., and Ramanathan, V.: Solar absorption by elemental and brown carbon determined from spectral observations, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 109, 17366–17371, 2012.
Bahreini, R., Dunlea, E. J., Matthew, B. M., Simons, C., Docherty, K. S., DeCarlo, P. F., Jimenez, J. L., Brock, C. A., and Middlebrook, A. M.: Design and Operation of a Pressure-Controlled Inlet for Airborne Sampling with an Aerodynamic Aerosol Lens, Aerosol Sci. Tech., 42, 465–471, https://doi.org/10.1080/02786820802178514, 2008.
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Short summary
Brown carbon (BrC) is found throughout the US continental troposphere during a summer of extensive biomass burning and its prevalence relative to black carbon (BC) increases with altitude. A radiative transfer model based on direct measurements of aerosol scattering and absorption by BC and BrC shows BrC reduces top-of-atmosphere forcing by 20%. A method to estimate BrC radiative forcing efficiencies from surface-based measurements is provided.
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