Aerosol-induced closure of marine cloud cells: enhanced effects in the presence of precipitation

Christensen, Matthew W.; Wu, Peng; Varble, Adam C.; Xiao, Heng; Fast, Jerome D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6455-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6455-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6455-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 11

Research article

|

03 Jun 2024

Research article |

| 03 Jun 2024

Aerosol-induced closure of marine cloud cells: enhanced effects in the presence of precipitation

Matthew W. Christensen, Peng Wu, Adam C. Varble, Heng Xiao, and Jerome D. Fast

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6455-2024-supplement

Data sets

CPC_ACEENA Mei Fan and Mikhail Pekour https://doi.org/10.5439/1440985

WCM water content for ACE-ENA Alyssa Matthews and Fan Mei https://doi.org/10.5439/1465759

MODIS Atmosphere L2 Cloud Product (06_L2) S. Platnick et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD06_L2.061

Cloud Optical Properties from the Multifilter Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSRCLDOD): An ARM Value-Added Product. 2014-06-01 to 2019-10-27, Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) Graciosa Island, Azores, Portugal (C1) D. Turner et al. https://www.arm.gov/capabilities/vaps/mfrsrcldod

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Short summary

Clouds are essential to keep Earth cooler by reflecting sunlight back to space. We show that an increase in aerosol concentration suppresses precipitation in clouds, causing them to accumulate water and expand in a polluted environment with stronger turbulence and radiative cooling. This process enhances their reflectance by 51 %. It is therefore prudent to account for cloud fraction changes in assessments of aerosol–cloud interactions to improve predictions of climate change.