Modeling the global radiative effect of brown carbon: a potentially larger heating source in the tropical free troposphere than black carbon

Zhang, Aoxing; Wang, Yuhang; Zhang, Yuzhong; Weber, Rodney J.; Song, Yongjia; Ke, Ziming; Zou, Yufei

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-1901-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-1901-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-1901-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

Research article

|

20 Feb 2020

Research article |

| 20 Feb 2020

Modeling the global radiative effect of brown carbon: a potentially larger heating source in the tropical free troposphere than black carbon

Aoxing Zhang, Yuhang Wang, Yuzhong Zhang, Rodney J. Weber, Yongjia Song, Ziming Ke, and Yufei Zou

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-1901-2020-supplement

Data sets

NASA DC3 data archive NASA https://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ArcView/dc3

NASA SEAC4RS data archive NASA https://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ArcView/seac4rs

MODIS Terra level 3 monthly dataset LAADS DAAC https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/archive/allData/61/MOD08_M3/

data archive CDIAC HIPPO https://hippo.ornl.gov/data_access

AERONET AOD measurements NASA https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/new_web/download_all_v3_aod.html

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Short summary

Black carbon (BC) and brown carbon (BrC) are light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols. We developed a module to simulate the emissions, atmospheric processing and direct radiative effect of BrC in the Community Earth System Model (CESM). We found that globally BrC is a significant absorber and is more centered in the tropical free troposphere compared to BC. The contribution of BrC heating to the Hadley circulation and latitudinal expansion of the tropics is comparable to BC heating.