Representing aerosols with realistic regional patterns improves projections of climate responses
Aerosols are tiny particles in the air that scatter sunlight and, overall, cool the planet. As the main locations of aerosol emissions are expected to change in the future, climate models need to represent aerosols effects accurately to estimate future climate development reliably. This study has examined how strongly projections depend on whether aerosols are implemented with realistic regional differences or as a spatially smoothed pattern. Using an intermediate complexity Earth system model, the authors compared simulations with the same global mean aerosol radiative forcing. When spatial variability was ignored, global mean temperature was nearly 0.1°C higher, corresponding to about 200 gigatonnes of CO2 uncertainty in remaining carbon budgets. The results support representing aerosols more realistically in simplified models and assessment metrics.
Original paper
