Analyses of Virtual Ship‐Tracks Systematically Underestimate Aerosol‐Cloud Interactions Signals

Yuan, Tianle; Song, Hua; Oreopoulos, Lazaros; Wood, Robert; Meyer, Kerry; Crawford, Alice; Smith, William; Eastman, Ryan

doi:10.1029/2024GL114356

i

Analyses of Virtual Ship‐Tracks Systematically Underestimate Aerosol‐Cloud Interactions Signals

2025
By Yuan, Tianle ; Song, Hua ; Oreopoulos, Lazaros ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Geophysical Research Letters
Personal Author:

Yuan, Tianle ; Song, Hua ; Oreopoulos, Lazaros ; Wood, Robert ; Meyer, Kerry ; Crawford, Alice ; Smith, William ; Eastman, Ryan
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; ARL (Air Resources Laboratory)
Description:

Ship‐tracks are important natural/opportunistic experiments to study aerosol‐cloud interactions (ACIs). However, detectable ship‐tracks are not produced in many instances. Virtual ship‐tracks have been conceived to expand the scale of ACIs analyses. Cloud responses in virtual ship‐tracks differ strongly from those of detected ones. Here we show that the current approach of virtual ship‐tracks can lead to systematic biases and errors and suggest necessary improvements. Errors in trajectory modeling introduce mismatches between areas actually affected by ship‐emissions and virtual ship‐track locations, that is, positional errors. Positional errors systematically underestimate ACI signals and the underestimate is severe as indicated by analysis of cloud droplet number concentration changes. The assumption of fixed ship‐track width also systematically diminishes resulting aerosol effects by more than 10%, which leads to a forcing difference of around 0.1 . We make suggestions to improve the simulation of virtual ship‐tracks so that their full potential for studying ACIs can be unleashed.
Source:

Geophysical Research Letters, 52(7)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL114356
ISSN:

0094-8276 ; 1944-8007
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)|https://ror.org/00var5q80
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA23OAR4310299
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY-NC-ND
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:70560b9008b044773b2c2ea50ec086a59eaa05340a723afcde20dc8d49d7a6c3c4bee5c066d1ece9bbe97add591f00da692c0790527524e28012f95baccb4690
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/71671/noaa_71671_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 1.52 MB ]

ON THIS PAGE

Details

The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners. As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.

BACK TO TOP