Warming impact of black carbon aerosols on the direct radiative forcing over a semi-arid location, Solapur in India

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the aerosol radiative forcing (ARF) using ground-based measurements of PM_2.5 and black carbon aerosols at a semi-arid, rain shadow location, Solapur in peninsular India. It is observed that aerosols caused a net cooling effect at top of the atmosphere (TOP) indicating that the aerosols reflect more solar radiation back to space than they absorb. At the surface, the aerosols caused a net cooling effect indicating more presence of scattering type aerosols. The resulting ARF of the aerosols was found to be ranging from +38 Wm^-2 in monsoon to +53 Wm^-2 in pre-monsoon indicating trapping of energy which resulted in a warming of the atmosphere. However, BC –only forcing indicated a significant warming effect at TOP as well as in the atmosphere which showed the potential of the absorbing carbonaceous aerosols. Overall, BC was responsible for 44% and 32% of the composite ARF, even though it formed only 7% and 2% of composite aerosol in the dry and wet periods, respectively. The warming impact of BC aerosols was also manifested in terms of their contribution to aerosol radiative forcing efficiency (ARFE) which was about four times more for BC-only than that for composite aerosols. More atmospheric heating rates were observed during dry periods for composite and BC-only aerosols than during wet period. These findings have important implications for aerosol-cloud-precipitation studies as well as the atmospheric thermodynamics and hydrological cycle over this semi-arid region where the total aerosol load is not significant and rainfall amount is scarce.