Articles | Volume 16, issue 21
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-13619-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-13619-2016
Research article
 | 
03 Nov 2016
Research article |  | 03 Nov 2016

Effect of aerosol subgrid variability on aerosol optical depth and cloud condensation nuclei: implications for global aerosol modelling

Natalie Weigum, Nick Schutgens, and Philip Stier

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We introduce a novel technique to isolate the effect of aerosol variability in models from other sources of variability by varying the resolution of aerosol and trace gas fields while maintaining a constant resolution in the rest of the model.

Our results show that aerosol variability has a large impact on simulating aerosol climate effects, even when meteorology and dynamics are fixed. Processes most affected are gas-phase chemistry and aerosol uptake of water through equilibrium reactions.
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