Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment
Tami C. Bond,Sarah J. Doherty,David W. Fahey,Piers M. Forster,Terje Koren Berntsen,Benjamin DeAngelo,Mark Flanner,Steven J. Ghan,Bernd Kärcher,Dorothy Koch,Stefan Kinne,Yutaka Kondo,Patricia K. Quinn,Marcus C. Sarofim,Martin G. Schultz,Michael Schulz,Chandra Venkataraman,Hua Zhang,Shiqiu Zhang,Nicolas Bellouin,Sarath K. Guttikunda,Philip K. Hopke,Mark Z. Jacobson,Johannes W. Kaiser,Zbigniew Klimont,Ulrike Lohmann,Joshua P. Schwarz,Drew Shindell,Trude Storelvmo,Stephen G. Warren,Charles S. Zender +30 more
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors provided an assessment 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.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.read more
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Book ChapterDOI
Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
TL;DR: Myhre et al. as discussed by the authors presented the contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative forcing.
Journal Article
An inventory of gaseous and primary aerosol emissions in Asia in the year 2000 : NASA global tropospheric experiment transport and chemical evolution over the pacific (TRACE-P): Measurements and analysis (TRACEP1)
David G. Streets,Tami C. Bond,G. R. Carrnichael,Suneeta D. Fernandes,Q. Fu,D. He,Zbigniew Klimont,S. M. Nelson,Nancy Y. Tsai,Michael Wang,Jung-Hun Woo,K. F. Yarber +11 more
TL;DR: In this paper, an inventory of air pollutant emissions in Asia in the year 2000 is developed to support atmospheric modeling and analysis of observations taken during the TRACE-P experiment funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the ACE-Asia experiment, in which emissions are estimated for all major anthropogenic sources, including biomass burning, in 64 regions of Asia.
Journal ArticleDOI
Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health
Nick Watts,W. Neil Adger,Paolo Agnolucci,Jason J. Blackstock,Peter Byass,Wenjia Cai,Sarah Chaytor,Tim Colbourn,Matthew Collins,Adam Cooper,Peter M. Cox,Joanna Depledge,Paul Drummond,Paul Ekins,Victor Galaz,Delia Grace,Hilary Graham,Michael Grubb,Andy Haines,Ian Hamilton,Alasdair Hunter,Xujia Jiang,Moxuan Li,Ilan Kelman,Lu Liang,Melissa C. Lott,Robert Lowe,Yong Luo,Georgina M. Mace,Mark A. Maslin,Maria Nilsson,Tadj Oreszczyn,Steve Pye,Tara Quinn,My Svensdotter,Sergey Venevsky,Koko Warner,Bing Xu,Jun Yang,Yongyuan Yin,Chaoqing Yu,Qiang Zhang,Peng Gong,Hugh Montgomery,Anthony Costello +44 more
TL;DR: The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change has been formed to map out the impacts of climate change, and the necessary policy responses, in order to ensure the highest attainable stand-alone position on climate change.
Journal ArticleDOI
Chemistry of atmospheric brown carbon.
TL;DR: Understanding of the climate-related properties of atmospheric OC is still incomplete and the specific ways in which OC impacts atmospheric environment and climate forcing are just beginning to be understood.
Journal ArticleDOI
Recommendations for reporting "black carbon" measurements
Andreas Petzold,John A. Ogren,Markus Fiebig,P. Laj,Shao-Meng Li,Urs Baltensperger,Thomas Holzer-Popp,Stefan Kinne,Gelsomina Pappalardo,Nobuo Sugimoto,Christoph Wehrli,Alfred Wiedensohler,Xiaoye Zhang +12 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a recommended terminology to clarify the terms used for black carbon in atmospheric research, with the goal of establishing unambiguous links between terms, targeted material properties and associated measurement techniques.
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