Climatic Influences on the Spatial and Temporal Variability of Aerosols over North America

气候对北美气溶胶时空变化的影响

• 批准号: 0351241
• 负责人: Helen Power
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: University South Carolina Research Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-03-15 至 2007-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0351241&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Climatic; Influences; Spatial; Temporal; Variability

Aerosols play an important role in the climate system by scattering and absorbing solar radiation and by affecting the physical properties of clouds. Despite the importance of aerosols, the processes that determine their spatial and temporal variability are not well understood. Furthermore, all methods for quantifying turbidity, which is the total amount of aerosol in the atmosphere, suffer from a major constraint in that they require cloudless sky conditions. This restriction produces gaps in the turbidity record and a sampling bias, which has led to questionable inferences about the variability of aerosols. This research will use meteorological and climatological analyses, together with aerosol data from 40 stations, to explain temporal and spatial variability in aerosol properties over continental North America. These analyses will then be used to provide aerosol climatologies (statistical summaries of aerosol properties) that will be more representative than those presently available. This research will permit improved aerosol parameterizations in regional and global climate models, which will help elucidate the relative roles of aerosols and greenhouse gases in the climate system. The research will therefore further our knowledge of the factors that influence climate and climate change and this will help policy makers prepare informed climate change policies.

气溶胶通过散射和吸收太阳辐射以及影响云的物理特性，在气候系统中发挥重要作用。 尽管气溶胶的重要性，决定其空间和时间的变化过程没有得到很好的理解。 此外，所有用于量化浑浊度（大气中气溶胶的总量）的方法都受到一个主要限制，即它们需要无云的天空条件。 这一限制在浊度记录和采样偏差中产生了空白，这导致了对气溶胶变异性的可疑推断。 这项研究将利用气象学和气候学分析，以及40个站点的气溶胶数据，解释北美大陆上空气溶胶特性的时空变异。 这些分析将被用来提供比现有的更具代表性的气溶胶气候学（气溶胶特性的统计摘要）。 这项研究将有助于改进区域和全球气候模式中的气溶胶参数化，这将有助于阐明气溶胶和温室气体在气候系统中的相对作用。 因此，这项研究将进一步加深我们对影响气候和气候变化的因素的了解，这将帮助政策制定者制定明智的气候变化政策。