Why do general circulation models overestimate the aerosol cloud lifetime effect? A case study comparing CAM5 and a CRM

Zhou, Cheng; Penner, Joyce E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-21-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-21-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-21-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

02 Jan 2017

Research article |

| 02 Jan 2017

Why do general circulation models overestimate the aerosol cloud lifetime effect? A case study comparing CAM5 and a CRM

Cheng Zhou and Joyce E. Penner

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Jan 2017)
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Preprint (discussion started on 21 Jul 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Chou & Penner review', Steven J Ghan, 30 Jul 2016
- AC1: 'reply to Ghan', C. Zhou, 30 Nov 2016
RC2: 'Review of “Why do GCMs overestimate the aerosol cloud lifetime effect?” by Zhou and Penner', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'reply to referee #1', C. Zhou, 30 Nov 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by C. Zhou on behalf of the Authors (07 Dec 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (08 Dec 2016) by Barbara Ervens

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Short summary

Observation-based studies have shown that the aerosol cloud lifetime effect or the increase of cloud liquid water with increased aerosol loading may have been overestimated in climate models. Here, by simulating the same shallow, warm clouds using a global climate model (CAM5) and a cloud resolving model (CRM) which has more complete and detailed cloud physics, we show how a climate model can overestimate the aerosol cloud lifetime effect due to its simplified representation of cloud processes.