Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CONDENSATION (Aerosol-ClOud iNteractions anD Effects oN atmoSpheric rAdiaTIve fOrciNg)
Reporting period: 2019-03-01 to 2021-02-28
The effect of atmospheric aerosol particles on clouds formation, distribution and properties is one of the most unknown effects affecting climate change. This low level of knowledge about the aerosol-cloud interaction processes effect on climate difficults model estimates which are key for the development of strategic plans for climate change mitigation and are decisive for policymakers worldwide. Therefore, there is an essential need for understanding the basics of aerosol-cloud interaction processes that lead to cloud formation and affects cloud properties. From the Earth’s surface it is possible to investigate these processes using remote sensing instrumentation such as lidars and cloud radars. These instruments provide information about aerosol and cloud properties at several altitudes under varied ambient conditions. With CONDENSATION we want to improve our understanding of the effects of these aerosol cloud-interaction processes on the climate and the Earth-atmosphere energy balance, allowing to improve plans and policies for climate change mitigation.
We performed theoretical evaluation through numerical models of optimum lidar and radar configurations in order to improve aerosol-cloud interaction processes understanding. Besides the optimization of the lidar and radar systems, we observed that there are many atmospheric processes involved in the aerosol-cloud interaction that need to be disentangled to improve our knowledge at this respect. Therefore, it is also necessary to advance in the development of retrieval algorithms for obtaining aerosol and cloud properties from radar and lidar signals. At the University of Granada, we implemented several algorithms that allowed us to obtain these properties from the experimental databases. We also analyzed the effect that the aerosol particles have on climate change by means of the analysis of their radiative properties with complex numerical models for radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Furthermore, we acquired a thorough experimental database using lidar and radar systems in combination with ancillary instrumentation available at the University of Granada, that allow us to improve our knowledge about the aerosol-cloud interaction processes occurring in the atmosphere under real conditions.
CONDENSATION contributed to understand the fundamentals of the ACI effects on radiative forcing, which is an important environmental problem with social and economic impacts. Results derived from this proposal improve our ability to quantify the influence of aerosol on air quality and are of interest to different end-users, such as the modelling community, which can benefit from the feedback from the results obtained here to improve climate change estimations; lidar system manufacturers, who can benefit from the results of the theoretical simulations; or policymakers, who need a scientific basis for decision-making.