Petr Chylek

Bio: Petr Chylek is an academic researcher from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The author has contributed to research in topics: Scattering & Radiative forcing. The author has an hindex of 37, co-authored 86 publications receiving 5129 citations. Previous affiliations of Petr Chylek include Dalhousie University & New Mexico State University.

Refractive indices of water and ice in the 0.65- to 2.5-µm spectral range.

Abstract: New accurate values of the imaginary part, k, of the refractive index of water at T = 22 °C, supercooled water at T = −8 °C and polycrystalline ice at T = −25 °C are reported. The k spectrum for water in the spectral region 0.65–2.5 μm is found to be in excellent agreement with those of previous studies. The k values for polycrystalline ice in the 1.44–2.50-μm region eliminate the large uncertainties existing among previously published conflicting sets of data. The imaginary part of refractive index of supercooled water shows a systematic shift of absorption peaks toward the longer wavelengths compared with that of water at warmer temperatures.

Effect of absorbing aerosols on global radiation budget

Abstract: An expression for a globally averaged value of direct radiative forcing by absorbing aerosols is derived and applied to the case of smokes produced by biomass burning. It is shown that the direct radiative forcing due to the biomass burning aerosols is a sensitive function of the size distribution of aerosol particles. For the range of measured size distributions of smoke aerosols the direct radiative forcing varies between −0.2 and −1.1 W/m².

A study of internal and external mixing scenarios and its effect on aerosol optical properties and direct radiative forcing

Abstract: [1] The optical properties and hence the radiative forcing of atmospheric aerosols are determined, in part, by the way in which the various constituents are externally or internally mixed. The mixing state must be known to compute the effective refractive index, water activity, and size distribution of the aerosols. In this study we found that the percentage difference in the optical properties, including extinction, single scattering albedo, and asymmetry parameter, between an internal mixture and external mixture of black carbon and ammonium sulfate can be over 25% for the dry case and over 50% for the wet case for typical mass mixing ratios. The differences are a result of a complicated combination of nonlinear Mie theory on the refractive index, assumptions about the coagulated particle sizes for internal mixtures, and the role of water uptake and deliquescence as a function of relative humidity. The computed optical properties are used to estimate the globally average clear-sky direct radiative forcing for different mixing assumptions. The results are displayed as a function of relative humidity to conveniently see the mixing effects for dry aerosols at less than the crystallization point, for dry internal and wet external mixtures between the crystallization and deliquescence points, and for fully wet mixtures above the deliquescence point. For a 9:1 ammonium sulfate to black carbon mass ratio, nearly all the cooling effect predicted for an external mixture is lost for the internally mixed assumption, especially for relative humidities less than the deliquescence point.

Observed and model simulated 20th century Arctic temperature variability: Canadian Earth System Model CanESM2

Abstract: . We present simulations of the 20th century Arctic temperature anomaly from the second generation Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2). The new model couples together an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, a land-vegetation model and terrestrial and oceanic interactive carbon cycle. It simulates well the observed 20th century Arctic temperature variability that includes the early and late 20th century warming periods and the intervening 1940–1970 period of substantial cooling. The addition of the land-vegetation model and the terrestrial and oceanic interactive carbon cycle to the coupled atmosphere-ocean model improves the agreement with observations from 1900–1970, however, it increases the overestimate of the post 1970 warming. In contrast the older generation coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models Canadian CanCM3 and NCAR/LANL CCSM3, used in the IPCC 2007 climate change assessment report, overestimate the rate of the 20th century Arctic warming by factor of two to three and they are unable to reproduce the observed 20th century Arctic climate variability.

Canadian Aerosol Module: A size-segregated simulation of atmospheric aerosol processes for climate and air quality models 1. Module development

Abstract: A size-segregated multicomponent aerosol algorithm, the Canadian Aerosol Module (CAM), was developed for use with climate and air quality models. It includes major aerosol processes in the atmosphere: generation, hygroscopic growth, coagulation, nucleation, condensation, dry deposition/sedimentation, below-cloud scavenging, aerosol activation, a cloud module with explicit microphysical processes to treat aerosol-cloud interactions and chemical transformation of sulphur species in clear air and in clouds. The numerical solution was optimized to efficiently solve the complicated size-segregated multicomponent aerosol system and make it feasible to be included in global and regional models. An internal mixture is assumed for all types of aerosols except for soil dust and black carbon which are assumed to be externally mixed close to sources. To test the algorithm, emissions to the atmosphere of anthropogenic and natural aerosols are simulated for two aerosol types: sea salt and sulphate. A comparison was made of two numerical solutions of the aerosol algorithm: process splitting and ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver. It was found that the process-splitting method used for this model is within 15% of the more accurate ODE solution for the total sulphate mass concentration and <1% accurate for sea-salt concentration. Furthermore, it is computationally more than 100 times faster. The sensitivity of the simulated size distributions to the number of size bins was also investigated. The diffusional behavior of each individual process was quantitatively characterized by the difference in the mode radius and standard deviation of a lognormal curve fit of distributions between the approximate solution and the 96-bin reference solution. Both the number and mass size distributions were adequately predicted by a sectional model of 12 bins in many situations in the atmosphere where the sink for condensable matter on existing aerosol surface area is high enough that nucleation of new particles is negligible. Total mass concentration was adequately simulated using lower size resolution of 8 bins. However, to properly resolve nucleation mode size distributions and minimize the numerical diffusion, a sectional model of 18 size bins or greater is needed. The number of size bins is more important in resolving the nucleation mode peaks than in reducing the diffusional behavior of aerosol processes. Application of CAM in a study of the global cycling of sea-salt mass accompanies this paper

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

The HITRAN 2008 molecular spectroscopic database

Abstract: This paper describes the contents of the 2016 edition of the HITRAN molecular spectroscopic compilation. The new edition replaces the previous HITRAN edition of 2012 and its updates during the intervening years. The HITRAN molecular absorption compilation is composed of five major components: the traditional line-by-line spectroscopic parameters required for high-resolution radiative-transfer codes, infrared absorption cross-sections for molecules not yet amenable to representation in a line-by-line form, collision-induced absorption data, aerosol indices of refraction, and general tables such as partition sums that apply globally to the data. The new HITRAN is greatly extended in terms of accuracy, spectral coverage, additional absorption phenomena, added line-shape formalisms, and validity. Moreover, molecules, isotopologues, and perturbing gases have been added that address the issues of atmospheres beyond the Earth. Of considerable note, experimental IR cross-sections for almost 300 additional molecules important in different areas of atmospheric science have been added to the database. The compilation can be accessed through www.hitran.org. Most of the HITRAN data have now been cast into an underlying relational database structure that offers many advantages over the long-standing sequential text-based structure. The new structure empowers the user in many ways. It enables the incorporation of an extended set of fundamental parameters per transition, sophisticated line-shape formalisms, easy user-defined output formats, and very convenient searching, filtering, and plotting of data. A powerful application programming interface making use of structured query language (SQL) features for higher-level applications of HITRAN is also provided.

Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment

Abstract: Black carbon aerosol plays a unique and important role in Earth's climate system. Black carbon is a type of carbonaceous material with a unique combination of physical properties. This assessment provides an evaluation of black-carbon climate forcing that is comprehensive in its inclusion of all known and relevant processes and that is quantitative in providing best estimates and uncertainties of the main forcing terms: direct solar absorption; influence on liquid, mixed phase, and ice clouds; and deposition on snow and ice. These effects are calculated with climate models, but when possible, they are evaluated with both microphysical measurements and field observations. Predominant sources are combustion related, namely, fossil fuels for transportation, solid fuels for industrial and residential uses, and open burning of biomass. Total global emissions of black carbon using bottom-up inventory methods are 7500 Gg yr−1 in the year 2000 with an uncertainty range of 2000 to 29000. However, global atmospheric absorption attributable to black carbon is too low in many models and should be increased by a factor of almost 3. After this scaling, the best estimate for the industrial-era (1750 to 2005) direct radiative forcing of atmospheric black carbon is +0.71 W m−2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of (+0.08, +1.27) W m−2. Total direct forcing by all black carbon sources, without subtracting the preindustrial background, is estimated as +0.88 (+0.17, +1.48) W m−2. Direct radiative forcing alone does not capture important rapid adjustment mechanisms. A framework is described and used for quantifying climate forcings, including rapid adjustments. The best estimate of industrial-era climate forcing of black carbon through all forcing mechanisms, including clouds and cryosphere forcing, is +1.1 W m−2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of +0.17 to +2.1 W m−2. Thus, there is a very high probability that black carbon emissions, independent of co-emitted species, have a positive forcing and warm the climate. We estimate that black carbon, with a total climate forcing of +1.1 W m−2, is the second most important human emission in terms of its climate forcing in the present-day atmosphere; only carbon dioxide is estimated to have a greater forcing. Sources that emit black carbon also emit other short-lived species that may either cool or warm climate. Climate forcings from co-emitted species are estimated and used in the framework described herein. When the principal effects of short-lived co-emissions, including cooling agents such as sulfur dioxide, are included in net forcing, energy-related sources (fossil fuel and biofuel) have an industrial-era climate forcing of +0.22 (−0.50 to +1.08) W m−2 during the first year after emission. For a few of these sources, such as diesel engines and possibly residential biofuels, warming is strong enough that eliminating all short-lived emissions from these sources would reduce net climate forcing (i.e., produce cooling). When open burning emissions, which emit high levels of organic matter, are included in the total, the best estimate of net industrial-era climate forcing by all short-lived species from black-carbon-rich sources becomes slightly negative (−0.06 W m−2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of −1.45 to +1.29 W m−2). The uncertainties in net climate forcing from black-carbon-rich sources are substantial, largely due to lack of knowledge about cloud interactions with both black carbon and co-emitted organic carbon. In prioritizing potential black-carbon mitigation actions, non-science factors, such as technical feasibility, costs, policy design, and implementation feasibility play important roles. The major sources of black carbon are presently in different stages with regard to the feasibility for near-term mitigation. This assessment, by evaluating the large number and complexity of the associated physical and radiative processes in black-carbon climate forcing, sets a baseline from which to improve future climate forcing estimates.