Does prognostic seeding along flight tracks produce  the desired effects of cirrus cloud thinning?

Tully, Colin; Neubauer, David; Villanueva, Diego; Lohmann, Ulrike

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-7673-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-7673-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-7673-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 13

Research article

|

13 Jul 2023

Research article |

| 13 Jul 2023

Does prognostic seeding along flight tracks produce the desired effects of cirrus cloud thinning?

Colin Tully, David Neubauer, Diego Villanueva, and Ulrike Lohmann

Data sets

Data analysis and plotting scripts for the "Does prognostic seeding along flight tracks produce the desired effects of cirrus cloud thinning?'' manuscript C. Tully, D. Neubauer, D. Villanueva, and U. Lohmann https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7779833

Data for the "Does prognostic seeding along flight tracks produce the desired effects of cirrus cloud thinning?" manuscript C. Tully, D. Neubauer, D. Villanueva, and U. Lohman https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7298771

Software for the ``Does prognostic seeding along flight tracks produce the desired effects of cirrus cloud thinning?'' manuscript C. Tully, D. Neubauer, D. Villanueva, and U. Lohmann https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8085946

Short summary

This study details the first attempt with a GCM to simulate a fully prognostic aerosol species specifically for cirrus climate intervention. The new approach is in line with the real-world delivery mechanism via aircraft. However, to achieve an appreciable signal from seeding, smaller particles were needed, and their mass emissions needed to be scaled by at least a factor of 100. These biases contributed to either overseeding or small and insignificant effects in response to seeding cirrus.