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Updated: Oct 4, 2025

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Opportunistic experiments to constrain aerosol effective radiative forcing.

Matthew W Christensen1,2, Andrew Gettelman3, Jan Cermak4,5

  • 1Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK.

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
|February 9, 2022
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Summary

Natural experiments using aerosol perturbations offer insights into aerosol-cloud interactions (ACIs), a key uncertainty in climate change. These studies improve understanding but scaling findings globally remains a challenge.

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Area of Science:

  • Atmospheric Science
  • Climate Science
  • Earth System Science

Background:

  • Aerosol-cloud interactions (ACIs) are a major source of uncertainty in current radiative forcing assessments.
  • Nonlinear cloud responses to aerosol changes and meteorological variability complicate causal inference in observational studies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review and synthesize findings from "opportunistic experiments" (natural experiments) investigating ACIs.
  • To improve understanding of aerosol radiative forcing and its uncertainties.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of natural and anthropogenic aerosol perturbations from diverse sources (volcanoes, fires, shipping).
  • Synthesis of satellite datasets and field campaign data.
  • Comparison of experimental conditions across different scales and locations.

Main Results:

  • Cloud albedo sensitivity to aerosols is strongly influenced by background meteorological conditions.
  • Averaging across experiments largely rules out significant liquid water path increases from aerosol perturbations.
  • Opportunistic experiments have enhanced process-level understanding of ACIs.

Conclusions:

  • While opportunistic experiments advance ACI understanding, global scalability of observed relationships remains uncertain.
  • Further investigation is needed to reduce uncertainties in aerosol radiative forcing assessments and climate change projections.