Synergistic Approach to Estimate Aerosol Direct Radiative Forcing from Active Satellite Observations

Given the considerable impact of aerosols in the global energy budget, continued refinement of direct radiative forcing estimates is needed to more accurately quantify the impacts of aerosols on climate. Estimating the radiative forcing from satellites, however, remains challenging task. To help reconcile this issue, observation-based estimates of the aerosol direct effect can now be coupled with present-day and pre-industrial emissions inventories to derive the direct aerosol radiative forcing for various aerosol species. In this work, vertically resolved data from CloudSat and CALIPSO provide new global estimates of aerosol radiative effects and the component owing to anthropogenic aerosols through the use of new observationally-derived radiative kernels. We will discuss the global and spatial distributions of the aerosol direct radiative effect, forcing, and their respective uncertainties. The uncertainty analyses suggest that while positive forcing is observed locally over regions where anthropogenic aerosols reside above clouds and bright surfaces, it is remains unlikely that anthropogenic aerosols warm the planet overall. Further, the observational-based radiative kernels are available and an ideal source for evaluating the aerosol radiative forcing from other model sources.