Articles | Volume 23, issue 19
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-12545-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-12545-2023
ACP Letters
 | Highlight paper
 | 
09 Oct 2023
ACP Letters | Highlight paper |  | 09 Oct 2023

Rapid saturation of cloud water adjustments to shipping emissions

Peter Manshausen, Duncan Watson-Parris, Matthew W. Christensen, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, and Philip Stier

Related authors

Weak liquid water path response in ship tracks
Anna Tippett, Edward Gryspeerdt, Peter Manshausen, Philip Stier, and Tristan W. P. Smith
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 13269–13283, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13269-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13269-2024, 2024
Short summary

Related subject area

Subject: Clouds and Precipitation | Research Activity: Remote Sensing | Altitude Range: Troposphere | Science Focus: Physics (physical properties and processes)
Impact of weather systems on observed precipitation at Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard)
Kerstin Ebell, Christian Buhren, Rosa Gierens, Giovanni Chellini, Melanie Lauer, Andreas Walbröl, Sandro Dahlke, Pavel Krobot, and Mario Mech
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7315–7342, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7315-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7315-2025, 2025
Short summary
Analysis of ship emission effects on clouds over the southeastern Atlantic using geostationary satellite observations
Nikos Benas, Jan Fokke Meirink, Rob Roebeling, and Martin Stengel
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6957–6973, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6957-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6957-2025, 2025
Short summary
Relationship between latent and radiative heating fields of tropical cloud systems using synergistic satellite observations
Xiaoting Chen, Claudia J. Stubenrauch, and Giulio Mandorli
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6857–6880, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6857-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6857-2025, 2025
Short summary
Shallow cloud variability in Houston, Texas, during the ESCAPE and TRACER field experiments
Zackary Mages, Pavlos Kollias, Bernat Puigdomènech Treserras, Paloma Borque, and Mariko Oue
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 6025–6045, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6025-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-6025-2025, 2025
Short summary
How does the lifetime of detrained cirrus impact the high-cloud radiative effect in the tropics?
George Horner and Edward Gryspeerdt
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 5617–5631, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5617-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-5617-2025, 2025
Short summary

Cited articles

Allan, D., van der Wel, C., Keim, N., Caswell, T. A., Wieker, D., Verweij, R., Reid, C., Grueter, L., Ramos, K., and Perry, R. W.: soft-matter/trackpy: Trackpy v0. 4.2, Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3492186, 2019.​​​​​​​ a
Bellouin, N., Quaas, J., Gryspeerdt, E., Kinne, S., Stier, P., Watson‐Parris, D., Boucher, O., Carslaw, K. S., Christensen, M., Daniau, A., Dufresne, J., Feingold, G., Fiedler, S., Forster, P., Gettelman, A., Haywood, J. M., Lohmann, U., Malavelle, F., Mauritsen, T., McCoy, D. T., Myhre, G., Mülmenstädt, J., Neubauer, D., Possner, A., Rugenstein, M., Sato, Y., Schulz, M., Schwartz, S. E., Sourdeval, O., Storelvmo, T., Toll, V., Winker, D., and Stevens, B.: Bounding Global Aerosol Radiative Forcing of Climate Change, Rev. Geophys., 58, e2019RG000660, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000660, 2020.​​​​​​​ a
Chen, Y.-C., Christensen, M. W., Xue, L., Sorooshian, A., Stephens, G. L., Rasmussen, R. M., and Seinfeld, J. H.: Occurrence of lower cloud albedo in ship tracks, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 12, 8223–8235, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-8223-2012, 2012. a, b
Christensen, M. W. and Stephens, G. L.: Microphysical and macrophysical responses of marine stratocumulus polluted by underlying ships: Evidence of cloud deepening, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D03201, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014638, 2011. a, b
Christensen, M. W., Gettelman, A., Cermak, J., Dagan, G., Diamond, M., Douglas, A., Feingold, G., Glassmeier, F., Goren, T., Grosvenor, D. P., Gryspeerdt, E., Kahn, R., Li, Z., Ma, P.-L., Malavelle, F., McCoy, I. L., McCoy, D. T., McFarquhar, G., Mülmenstädt, J., Pal, S., Possner, A., Povey, A., Quaas, J., Rosenfeld, D., Schmidt, A., Schrödner, R., Sorooshian, A., Stier, P., Toll, V., Watson-Parris, D., Wood, R., Yang, M., and Yuan, T.: Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 641–674, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-641-2022, 2022. a
Download
Executive editor
Ship tracks are enhanced regions of cloud brightness that trail behind ships that are known to be created by their effluent. They are widely used as observational test beds to deepen understanding of how pollution might affect cloud microphysical processes and climate at larger regional and global scales.  This study uses satellite observations of cloud properties and records of ship position and their effluent to assess perturbations from ship emissions on cloud droplet number and liquid water path. The study found that, as expected, the droplet number perturbation in shiptracks scales with ship emission rates of aerosol particles. Surprisingly, however, the liquid water path in drizzling clouds increased by an amount that was nearly fixed. The observation points to novel non-linear threshold behaviours of relevance to representations of aerosol indirect effects in climate models.
Short summary
Aerosol from burning fuel changes cloud properties, e.g., the number of droplets and the content of water. Here, we study how clouds respond to different amounts of shipping aerosol. Droplet numbers increase linearly with increasing aerosol over a broad range until they stop increasing, while the amount of liquid water always increases, independently of emission amount. These changes in cloud properties can make them reflect more or less sunlight, which is important for the earth's climate.
Share
Altmetrics
Final-revised paper
Preprint