Articles | Volume 24, issue 19
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11207-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-11207-2024
Research article
 | 
09 Oct 2024
Research article |  | 09 Oct 2024

Present-day methane shortwave absorption mutes surface warming relative to preindustrial conditions

Robert J. Allen, Xueying Zhao, Cynthia A. Randles, Ryan J. Kramer, Bjørn H. Samset, and Christopher J. Smith

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Cited articles

Allen, R.: CESM2/CAM6 Idealized Methane Simulations, Zenodo [data set], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10357888, 2023. 
Allen, R. J., Zhao, X., Randles, C. A., Kramer, R. J., Samset, B. H., and Smith, C. J.: Surface warming and wetting due to methane's long-wave radiative effects muted by short-wave absorption, Nat. Geosci., 16, 314–320, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01144-z, 2023. 
Allen, R. J., Amiri-Farahani, A., Lamarque, J.-F., Smith, C., Shindell, D., Hassan, T., and Chung, C. E.: Observationally-constrained aerosol–cloud semi-direct effects, npj Clim. Atmos. Sci., 2, 16, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-019-0073-9, 2019. 
Amiri-Farahani, A., Allen, R. J., Li, K.-F., and Chu, J.-E.: The semidirect effect of combined dust and sea salt aerosols in a multimodel analysis, Geophys. Res. Lett., 46, 10512–10521, 2019. 
Byrom, R. E. and Shine, K. P.: Methane's solar radiative forcing,Geophys. Res. Lett., 49, e2022GL098270, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL098270, 2022. 
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Short summary
Present-day methane shortwave absorption mutes 28% (7–55%) of the surface warming associated with its longwave absorption. The precipitation increase associated with the longwave radiative effects of the present-day methane perturbation is also muted by shortwave absorption but not significantly so.  Methane shortwave absorption also impacts the magnitude of its climate feedback parameter, largely through the cloud feedback.
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