Publication Date:
2009-10-02
Description:
It is thought that changes in the concentration of cloud-active aerosol can alter the precipitation efficiency of clouds, thereby changing cloud amount and, hence, the radiative forcing of the climate system. Despite decades of research, it has proved frustratingly difficult to establish climatically meaningful relationships among the aerosol, clouds and precipitation. As a result, the climatic effect of the aerosol remains controversial. We propose that the difficulty in untangling relationships among the aerosol, clouds and precipitation reflects the inadequacy of existing tools and methodologies and a failure to account for processes that buffer cloud and precipitation responses to aerosol perturbations.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Stevens, Bjorn -- Feingold, Graham -- England -- Nature. 2009 Oct 1;461(7264):607-13. doi: 10.1038/nature08281.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Max-Planck-Institut fur Meteorologie, KlimaCampus, 20251 Hamburg, Germany. bjorn.stevens@zmaw.de〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19794487" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
