Constraining marine boundary layer cloud properties in climate models: (CLOSURE)

Concentrations of both greenhouse gases (GHG) and aerosols (tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere) have increased considerably since pre-industrial time. Whilst anthropogenic emissions of GHG warm the planet, aerosol emissions exert a significant, yet poorly quantified cooling that acts to offset a significant fraction of global warming from GHG. Despite decades of research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report continues to highlight the climate sensitivity and aerosol-cloud-interactions (ACI) as the two key uncertainties limiting our understanding of climate change. Improving model estimates of climate change sensitivity (global temperature change per unit climate forcing) to greenhouse gas emissions is primarily driven by inter-model differences how climate models represent the impacts of feedbacks between low-level clouds and the climate system as temperature increases. Reducing these inter-model differences is severely hampered by the accuracy by which low level marine boundary layer (MBL) clouds, key modulators of the net radiation budget, are represented in the Earth System Models (ESMs) we use to provide estimates of future climate scenarios. Due to computational limitations these ESMs cannot explicitly represent small-scale atmospheric processes key for the formation of MBL at the scale at which they occur in nature (down to the size of aerosols). Instead, atmospheric physical processes related to cloud formation have to be parameterised (a simplified form of the complex process). Creating simplified representations of complex cloud processes that occur over a wide range of temporal/spatial scales is a challenging undertaking for climate scientists. Uncertainties in these parameterisations propagates through to our ability to accurately represent MBL in ESMs.

The focus of this project will be to improve understanding of small-scale MBL processes by addressing current deficiencies in ESM parameterisations of cloud droplet formation, the direct microphysical link between aerosols and clouds. This will be achieved by using new modelling frameworks to capitalise on detailed flight measurements of MBL clouds from the NASA Earth Venture Suborbital mission called ACTIVATE (Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment). ACTIVATE represents a novel measurement campaign of unprecedented scope for understanding MBL clouds as it will involve the deployment of two aircraft with well-matched groundspeeds. This strategy will allow for co-location of radiative properties of clouds from an aircraft flying above the MBL with an aircraft performing in-situ aerosol and cloud measurements within the MBL. This will provide a unique dataset with which we can constrain both process-scale cloud models, and large-scale ESMs to improve current small-scale ACI parameterisations, and subsequently the accuracy by which MBL clouds are represented in ESMs. To reach these goals the CLOSURE will use a new modelling framework in which a computationally fast cloud model known as a cloud parcel model (CPM). has been embedded in an ESM for the first time. These types of cloud models can accurately simulate the growth of a population of aerosol particles into cloud droplets in an ascending parcel of air. This embedded CPM framework will crucially allow for a detailed investigation of ACI in ESMs against measurements from ACTIVATE by providing additional model information for evaluation, e.g. droplet spectra. Furthermore, it will provide an efficient and seamless integration of process knowledge gained at the process scale from offline simulation to the large-scale when embedded in the ESM. This will be used to provide better understanding on the role of key small-scale processes involved in ACI for the representation of MBL clouds. The resulting improved theoretical descriptions of MBL cloud processes will reduce current uncertainties in future climate scenarios estimates.