References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-9-8493-2009

Exploiting the weekly cycle as observed over Europe to analyse aerosol indirect effects in two climate models

Quaas

¹ Boucher

² Jones

² Weedon

G. P.

² Kieser

¹ Joos

¹ ³

Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstr. 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK

now at: Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Universitätsstr. 16, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

09 11 2009

9 21 8493 8501

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/8493/2009/acp-9-8493-2009.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/8493/2009/acp-9-8493-2009.pdf

A weekly cycle in aerosol pollution and some meteorological quantities is observed over Europe. In the present study we exploit this effect to analyse aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions. A weekly cycle is imposed on anthropogenic emissions in two general circulation models that include parameterizations of aerosol processes and cloud microphysics. It is found that the simulated weekly cycles in sulfur dioxide, sulfate, and aerosol optical depth in both models agree reasonably well with those observed indicating model skill in simulating the aerosol cycle. A distinct weekly cycle in cloud droplet number concentration is demonstrated in both observations and models. For other variables, such as cloud liquid water path, cloud cover, top-of-the-atmosphere radiation fluxes, precipitation, and surface temperature, large variability and contradictory results between observations, model simulations, and model control simulations without a weekly cycle in emissions prevent us from reaching any firm conclusions about the potential aerosol impact on meteorology or the realism of the modelled second aerosol indirect effects.

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