LYNN RUSSELL, Armin Sorooshian, John Seinfeld, Bruce Albrecht, Athanasios Nenes, Lars Ahlm, Yi-Chun Chen, Matthew Coggon, Jill Craven, Richard Flagan, Amanda Frossard, Haflidi Jonsson, Eunsil Jung, Jack Lin, Andrew Metcalf, Rob Modini, Johannes Muelmenstaedt, Greg Roberts, Taylor Shingler, Siwon Song, Edwin Sumargo, Zhen Wang, Anna Wonaschutz, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Abstract Number: 661 Working Group: Aerosols, Clouds, and Climate
Abstract Aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions are widely held to be the largest single source of uncertainty in climate model projections of future radiative forcing due to increasing anthropogenic emissions. The underlying causes of this uncertainty among modeled predictions of climate are the gaps in our fundamental understanding of cloud processes. There has been significant progress with both observations and models on addressing these important questions, but quantifying them correctly is nontrivial and limits our ability to represent them in global climate models. The Eastern Pacific Emitted Aerosol Cloud Experiment (E-PEACE) 2011 was a targeted aircraft campaign with embedded modeling studies, using the CIRPAS Twin Otter aircraft and the Research Vessel Point Sur in July and August 2011 off the coast of Monterey, California, with a full payload of instruments to measure particle and cloud number, mass, composition, and water uptake distributions. E-PEACE included (a) using three emitted particle sources to separate particle-induced feedbacks from natural variability, namely (i) combustion particles from container ships with dry diameters between 50 and 100 nm, (ii) shipboard smoke-generated particles with dry diameters between 100 nm and 1 μm, and (iii) aircraft-based milled, coated salt particles with dry diameters between 3 and 5 μm; (b) comparing large eddy simulations and aerosol-cloud parcel modeling studies to measured plume dispersion and interactions to form the basis for interpreting the aircraft observations; and (c) analyzing satellite images of the effects of these emitted particles to quantify warm cloud microphysics.