Articles | Volume 25, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-473-2025
Research article
 | 
15 Jan 2025
Research article |  | 15 Jan 2025

Impact of host climate model on contrail cirrus effective radiative forcing estimates

Weiyu Zhang, Kwinten Van Weverberg, Cyril J. Morcrette, Wuhu Feng, Kalli Furtado, Paul R. Field, Chih-Chieh Chen, Andrew Gettelman, Piers M. Forster, Daniel R. Marsh, and Alexandru Rap

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Cited articles

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Short summary
Contrail cirrus is the largest, but also most uncertain, contribution of aviation to global warming. We evaluate, for the first time, the impact of the host climate model on contrail cirrus properties. Substantial differences exist between contrail cirrus formation, persistence, and radiative effects in the host climate models. Reliable contrail cirrus simulations require advanced representation of cloud optical properties and microphysics, which should be better constrained by observations.
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