IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v405y2000i6782d10.1038_35011039.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Large differences in tropical aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere and Earth's surface

Author

Listed:
  • S. K. Satheesh

    (Center for Clouds, Chemistry, and Climate (C4), Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego)

  • V. Ramanathan

    (Center for Clouds, Chemistry, and Climate (C4), Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego)

Abstract

The effect of radiative forcing by anthropogenic aerosols is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate predictions1,2,3,4,5,6. Direct observations of the forcing are therefore needed, particularly for the poorly understood tropical aerosols. Here we present an observational method for quantifying aerosol forcing to within ±5 per cent. We use calibrated satellite radiation measurements and five independent surface radiometers to quantify the aerosol forcing simultaneously at the Earth's surface and the top of the atmosphere over the tropical northern Indian Ocean. In winter, this region is covered by anthropogenic aerosols of sulphate, nitrate, organics, soot and fly ash from the south Asian continent7,8. Accordingly, mean clear-sky solar radiative heating for the winters of 1998 and 1999 decreased at the ocean surface by 12 to 30 W m-2, but only by 4 to 10 W m-2 at the top of the atmosphere. This threefold difference (due largely to solar absorption by soot) and the large magnitude of the observed surface forcing both imply that tropical aerosols might slow down the hydrological cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • S. K. Satheesh & V. Ramanathan, 2000. "Large differences in tropical aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere and Earth's surface," Nature, Nature, vol. 405(6782), pages 60-63, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:405:y:2000:i:6782:d:10.1038_35011039
    DOI: 10.1038/35011039
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35011039
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35011039?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khalil, Samy A. & Shaffie, A.M., 2016. "Attenuation of the solar energy by aerosol particles: A review and case study," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 363-375.
    2. Nishi Srivastava, 2020. "Association of modeled PM2.5 with aerosol optical depth: model versus satellite," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 102(2), pages 689-705, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:405:y:2000:i:6782:d:10.1038_35011039. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.