Description:

Atmospheric aerosols from natural or anthropogenic sources have profound impacts on Earth's radiation budget, hydrological cycle, as well as regional and global climate. However, their radiative forcing in the climate system remains highly uncertain, representing the largest source of uncertainty in climate predictions. Aerosols scatter and absorb solar radiation, resulting in changes to radiative fluxes at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA), at the surface, and within the atmospheric column. Light absorbing aerosols can also modify the atmospheric temperature structure, decrease solar radiation at the surface, and lower surface sensible and latent fluxes, suppressing convection and reducing cloud fraction. Additionally, aerosols indirectly impact climate by altering cloud development, lifetime, albedo, and precipitation efficiency. On the other hand, climate variabilities also affect aerosol cycle and lifetime by altering aerosol removal processes. Due to this complexity, current treatments of aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions remain crude in climate models. This session aims to review the current state of understanding of aerosol-climate interactions from regional to global scale. We invite papers on any related subjects.