Radiative forcing | EPFL Graph Search

Radiative forcing (or climate forcing) is the change in energy flux in the atmosphere caused by natural or anthropogenic factors of climate change as measured in watts per meter squared. It is a scientific concept used to quantify and compare the external drivers of change to Earth's energy balance. These external drivers are distinguished from climate feedbacks and internal variability, which also influence the direction and magnitude of imbalance. Positive radiative forcing means Earth receives more incoming energy from sunlight than it radiates to space. This net gain of energy will cause warming. Conversely, negative radiative forcing means that Earth loses more energy to space than it receives from the Sun, which produces cooling. A planet in radiative equilibrium with its parent star and the rest of space can be characterized by net zero radiative forcing and by a planetary equilibrium temperature. Radiative forcing on Earth is meaningfully evaluated at the tropopause and at

Numerical characterization and engineering of transport in morphologically complex heterogeneous media

Xiaoyu Dai

A multi-scale numerical methodology for the assessment of radiation and optical characteristics of complex structured soot-contaminated snow layers was investigated first. The methodology accounted for the exact morphology at the various scales and utilizes volume-averaging approaches with the corresponding effective properties to couple the scales. At the continuum level, the volume-averaged coupled radiative transfer equations were solved utilizing i) effective radiative transport properties obtained by direct Monte Carlo simulations at the pore level, and ii) averaged bulk material properties obtained at particle level by discrete dipole approximation calculations. The contribution of soot additives to the radiative forcing was quantitatively estimated by numerical simulation and qualitatively validated with the published experimental data.Additional coupled heat and mass transfer phenomena were then investigated for a two-step solar thermochemical water/carbon dioxide splitting reactor. It was composed of two distinct scales: porous reacting materials at the mesoscale and a batch reactor at the macro-scale. A transient multi-physics volume-averaged model of the reactive porous media undergoing the reduction and oxidation steps was developed. The effective heat and mass transport properties of reticulated porous foams were incorporated through porosity-dependent empirical correlations. Porosity-dependent reduction, oxidation, and cyclic performance for a uniform and homogenous porous structure were assessed and followed by the investigation of diverse structures with non-uniform porosities along the reactor. Subsequently, the effect of structural anisotropy on the system performance was assessed by extending the previous model into 2-dimensions. The porous medium was assumed to exhibit anisotropic transport behaviors in terms of heat transfer (radiation, conduction, convection) and mass transfer. Additionally, two operational configurations were investigated: a conventional concurrent flow configuration of fluid and irradiation and a scenario where the principal flow axis was perpendicular to the irradiation direction. In terms of radiative properties, a structure with a complete forward scattering phase function and low scattering albedo ensured the largest absorption, increasing the production rate. Anisotropic structures with a higher degree of anisotropy in permeability were more favored when the incoming radiation was perpendicular to the fluid flow direction, where the interphase heat convection was enhanced.Lastly, the engineering of the porous structure was explored by establishing a direct relationship between the local morphological characteristics and the reduction performance. This was implemented by direct-pore simulations on the discrete scale that were directly coupled to the volume-averaged finite volume simulations on the continuum scale. A large number of porous structures were artificially generated and its transport characteristics calculated by the pore-levels simulations. These calculated results were used to train a machine-learning algorithm that predicted the oxygen yield solely from based on the morphology. The learning algorithm identified the most significant morphological descriptors for a specific performance target and provided guidelines for the optimal porous structure design.

EPFL2021

Overview of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition: Study of Preindustrial-like Aerosols and Their Climate Effects (ACE-SPACE)

Andrea Baccarini, Sebastian Johannes Heinz-Josef Landwehr, Robin Lewis Modini, Julia Schmale

Uncertainty in radiative forcing caused by aerosol–cloud interactions is about twice as large as for CO2 and remains the least well understood anthropogenic contribution to climate change. A major cause of uncertainty is the poorly quantified state of aerosols in the pristine preindustrial atmosphere, which defines the baseline against which anthropogenic effects are calculated. The Southern Ocean is one of the few remaining near-pristine aerosol environments on Earth, but there are very few measurements to help evaluate models. The Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition: Study of Preindustrial-like Aerosols and their Climate Effects (ACE-SPACE) took place between December 2016 and March 2017 and covered the entire Southern Ocean region (Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans; length of ship track >33,000 km) including previously unexplored areas. In situ measurements covered aerosol characteristics [e.g., chemical composition, size distributions, and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentrations], trace gases, and meteorological variables. Remote sensing observations of cloud properties, the physical and microbial ocean state, and back trajectory analyses are used to interpret the in situ data. The contribution of sea spray to CCN in the westerly wind belt can be larger than 50%. The abundance of methanesulfonic acid indicates local and regional microbial influence on CCN abundance in Antarctic coastal waters and in the open ocean. We use the in situ data to evaluate simulated CCN concentrations from a global aerosol model. The extensive, available ACE-SPACE dataset (https://zenodo.org/communities/spi-ace?page=1&size=20) provides an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate models and to reduce the uncertainty in radiative forcing associated with the natural processes of aerosol emission, formation, transport, and processing occurring over the pristine Southern Ocean.

2019

Aerosol Transport and Distribution

Quentin Bourgeois

The fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) unambiguously indicates that the climate is changing. Climate change is induced by changes in atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols, solar radiation and land surface properties, which all alter the radiative balance of the Earth. Among them, greenhouse gases and aerosols are likely the compounds affecting the climate the most. While greenhouse gases warm the Earth, aerosols influence its radiative balance by scattering and absorbing solar radiation (the direct effect), and by modifying cloud amount and properties (the indirect effect). The radiative forcing of aerosols on the climate is however the less understood among the various forcings currently considered in the IPCC assessment. This is likely related to the lack of comprehensive and accurate observations of aerosols (and in particular of their vertical distribution) which thus makes global aerosol models difficult to constrain. Recent model intercomparisons have indicated that different assumptions regarding aerosol emissions, formation and growing properties, and removal processes generate large diversities within models. These large diversities are found in particular in the Arctic and the upper troposphere region where extreme surrounding conditions take place, limiting instrument sensitivity and accuracy. The objectives of this thesis are to better quantify the processes driving the aerosol distribution in regions where the uncertainties are the largest, including the Arctic region and the upper troposphere, and to assess the quality of CALIOP observations. For this purpose, we used the fully coupled global climate-aerosol-chemistry ECHAM5-HAMMOZ model conjointly with a suite of remote sensing observations including the CALIOP satellite instrument, which provides the vertical distribution of aerosols. The model predicts the size distribution and composition of aerosols as well as the number concentration of cloud droplets and ice crystals. We first investigated the processes that drive the transport of soluble and insoluble compounds toward the Arctic in the ECHAM5-HAMMOZ model. Recognizing that scavenging processes may be an issue in global models, we "re-visited" their properties in ECHAM5-HAMMOZ. We find that the model better reproduces the aerosol vertical distribution in the northern mid- and high-latitudes, especially in the free troposphere, by decreasing aerosol scavenging coefficients in the model. Using smaller aerosol scavenging coefficients results in an increase of aerosol burden and lifetime, especially in the Arctic. In addition, the Arctic haze phenomenon is better represented in the simulation using decreased aerosol scavenging coefficients. The relative contributions of different processes governing the transport of aerosols from the midlatitudes toward the Arctic together with the relative contributions of different geopolitical source regions were then quantified. We find that Europe and Siberia contribute the most to the Arctic pollution even though Asian anthropogenic emissions are much larger. The model suggests that BC emitted in Siberia and Europe is ten times more efficiently deposited onto the Arctic than BC emitted in Asia. We next investigated an aerosol layer that forms in the vicinity of the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) over the southern Asian and Indian Ocean region. Aerosols in this layer are observed with the CALIOP instrument even though ice clouds partly mask their signal. The aerosol layer follows the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which indicates that these aerosols are likely transported during convective processes. The ECHAM5.5-HAM2 model reproduces such an aerosol layer in the TTL over the same region but clearly overestimates CALIOP data. Model results suggest that aerosols in this layer are mostly sulfate particles transported during convective processes and originating from natural sources. The shortwave forcing of this aerosol layer is estimated. Finally, we assessed the accuracy of aerosol extinction retrievals from the CALIOP satellite instrument by comparing them with remote sensing observations such as AERONET, MODIS and MISR over the last four years. Overall, standard CALIOP products underestimate by 50% observed aerosol extinctions. However, this comparison is substantially improved by screening CALIOP data. The comparison of the CALIOP screened product with the ECHAM5.5-HAM2 model shows large disparities in model results. The model reproduces quite well the observed interannual variability and vertical distribution of aerosols in Europe and North Africa while it underestimates them in America and Asia. This is likely due to an underestimate of dust and anthropogenic emissions in North America and Asia.

EPFL2012