Unveiling aerosol–cloud interactions – Part 1: Cloud contamination in satellite products enhances the aerosol indirect forcing estimate

Christensen, Matthew W.; Neubauer, David; Poulsen, Caroline A.; Thomas, Gareth E.; McGarragh, Gregory R.; Povey, Adam C.; Proud, Simon R.; Grainger, Roy G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13151-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13151-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13151-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

Research article

|

07 Nov 2017

Research article |

| 07 Nov 2017

Unveiling aerosol–cloud interactions – Part 1: Cloud contamination in satellite products enhances the aerosol indirect forcing estimate

Matthew W. Christensen, David Neubauer, Caroline A. Poulsen, Gareth E. Thomas, Gregory R. McGarragh, Adam C. Povey, Simon R. Proud, and Roy G. Grainger

Data sets

AATSR Multimission land and sea surface data, version 2.1. NERC Earth Observation Data Centre European Space Agency http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/1d0c047ea3ced97cc7e988d7d286052a

Short summary

The cloud-aerosol pairing algorithm (CAPA) is developed to quantify the impact of near-cloud aerosol retrievals on satellite-based aerosol–cloud statistical relationships. We find that previous satellite-based radiative forcing estimates of aerosol–cloud interactions represented in key climate reports are likely exaggerated by up to 50 % due to including retrieval artefacts in the aerosols located near clouds. It is demonstrated that this retrieval artefact can be corrected in current products.