HBCU-Excellence in Research: Vertical Profiles of Aerosols and Their Radiative Impacts

HBCU-卓越研究：气溶胶的垂直剖面及其辐射影响

• 批准号: 1832011
• 负责人: Vernon Morris
• 金额: $ 29.99万
• 依托单位: Howard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832011&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: HBCU; Excellence; Research; Vertical; Profiles

The research will seek to improve understanding of aerosol's impacts on climate change and air pollution; this has implications for health as well as societal impacts. In addition, a variety of education, field experiment and research opportunities will be available for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) undergraduate students as after class research experiences. The project also provides support and training for a HBCU graduate student and a postdoctoral fellow. Moreover, there will be plenty of opportunities to introduce aerosol radiative forcing and remote sensing as real examples in undergraduate and graduate geoscience courses to help students to improve their research techniques and develop their theses and dissertation topics.Aerosols have cooling effect on climate system through reflecting solar radiation. At the same time, some aerosols e.g. black carbon, can absorb solar radiation, which cools the surface but warms the atmosphere in the process. These effects of aerosols on radiation, the temperature profile, along with the role of aerosols as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), impact the radiative balance through the direct radiative effects of aerosols and indirect radiative effects on cloud properties and precipitation. To estimate aerosol effects on radiative forcing, knowing information about vertical distribution of aerosols is crucial since the vertical distribution of aerosols has a significant effect on the sign of radiative forcing. This research will develop a new aerosol vertical distribution retrieval algorithm which can take advantage of broad ceilometer networks on aerosol vertical distribution observations. Then the variability of aerosol vertical distributions and the impacts on radiative forcing and heating rate profile will be investigated. The investigated climate regions include areas of rural, suburban-urban, urban, urban-dust and ocean areas from mid-latitude to tropics. This research will investigate three scientific questions: (1) What are the characteristics of aerosol vertical distributions at different regions and seasons? (2) what are impacts of the aerosol vertical distribution on radiative forcing? and (3) what are the characteristics of heating rate profile associated with aerosols at different regions and seasons?Aerosols direct and indirect effects on radiative forcing is still one of the largest uncertainties in global climate models (IPCC, 2013) and the uncertainty in the aerosol vertical distribution alone can contribute as much half of the uncertainties of the global aerosols direct effect. The information of aerosol vertical distribution is needed to quantify the effects of aerosols on radiative forcing and how these in turn influence climate and the hydrological cycle. This study will enhance our understanding of aerosol vertical distributions though a new retrieval algorithm. It will improve the study of aerosol direct effects on radiative forcing as well as the indirect effects due to aerosol-cloud-precipitation interaction. It will aid to improve aerosol parameterizations and then improve air quality prediction, weather forecast and climate models.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项研究将寻求提高对气溶胶对气候变化和空气污染的影响的了解；这对健康和社会影响都有影响。此外，历史黑人学院和大学(HBCU)的STEM(科学、技术、工程和数学)本科生将获得各种教育、实地实验和研究机会，作为课外研究体验。该项目还为HBCU的一名研究生和一名博士后研究员提供支持和培训。此外，将有大量机会在本科生和研究生的地球科学课程中介绍气溶胶辐射强迫和遥感作为真实例子，帮助学生提高研究技能，发展他们的论文和学位论文主题。气溶胶通过反射太阳辐射对气候系统产生冷却作用。与此同时，一些气溶胶，如黑碳，可以吸收太阳辐射，在这个过程中，太阳辐射使表面变冷，但使大气变暖。气溶胶对辐射、温度分布的这些影响，以及作为云凝结核(CCN)的气溶胶的作用，通过气溶胶的直接辐射效应和对云特性和降水的间接辐射效应来影响辐射平衡。要估计气溶胶对辐射强迫的影响，了解气溶胶垂直分布的信息是至关重要的，因为气溶胶的垂直分布对辐射强迫的信号有很大影响。这项研究将开发一种新的气溶胶垂直分布反演算法，该算法可以利用广泛的Ceileter网络对气溶胶垂直分布进行观测。然后研究气溶胶垂直分布的变异性及其对辐射强迫和加热率廓线的影响。所调查的气候区包括从中纬度到热带的农村、郊区、城市、城市沙尘和海洋地区。本研究将探讨三个科学问题：(1)不同地区和季节的气溶胶垂直分布特征是什么？(2)气溶胶垂直分布对辐射强迫有什么影响？气溶胶对辐射强迫的直接和间接影响仍然是全球气候模式中最大的不确定性之一(IPCC，2013)，仅气溶胶垂直分布的不确定性就可以贡献全球气溶胶直接影响不确定性的一半。需要气溶胶垂直分布信息来量化气溶胶对辐射强迫的影响，以及这些影响反过来又如何影响气候和水文循环。这项研究将通过一种新的反演算法来加深我们对气溶胶垂直分布的理解。这将促进对气溶胶对辐射强迫的直接影响以及气溶胶-云-降水相互作用的间接影响的研究。它将有助于改进气溶胶参数，然后改进空气质量预测、天气预报和气候模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。