Satellite Observations of Natural and Anthropogenic Aerosol Effects on Clouds and Climate

Anthropogenic aerosols affect the climate system and the hydrological cycle. The net effect of aerosols is to cool the climate system, directly by reflecting sunlight to space, and indirectly by increasing the brightness and cover of clouds that in turn also reflect more sunlight to space. The uncertainty in the aerosol effect on climate is 5 times greater than that of the greenhouse gases. The reason for this is the short aerosol lifetime and chemical complexity, that makes it difficult to represent the global aerosol budget from surface or aircraft measurements. Satellites provide daily global information about the aerosol content, generating large statistics with excellent regional and global representation of the aerosol column concentration, and differentiating fine from coarse aerosol. Here we use observations performed with the MODIS instrument onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites to differentiate natural from anthropogenic aerosols, and to measure the aerosol effect on cloud properties and on the reflectivity of sunlight.     

人为活动对高平流层,中间层大气的影响

利用一维光化、辐射耦合模式研究了人为活动所排放出的废弃物ＣＨ４、Ｎ２Ｏ和ＣＯ２含量增加对高平流层，中间层大气的影响。结果指出，对流层中这些气体增加一倍将导致上中层大气水汽、Ｏ３和温度的明显变化。ＣＯ２含量增加将使上中层温度降低约１０Ｋ；而ＣＨ４含量的加倍不仅使中层顶附近水汽含量增加５０％以上，也使其温度有更明显的下降，这将更有利于於光云的形成。