Cloudiness change with aerosol trend reversal over China: data-model synergy from regional to large scale

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The response of clouds to anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition constitutes a large uncertainty when quantifying the effective forcing of global climate change. One key ele­ment is the response of clouds to aerosol emissions. In these aerosol-cloud interactions, it emerges currently as the key question how cloud horizontal extent, or cloud fraction, changes in adjustment to cloud droplet number concentration changes. Cloudtrend will substantially im­prove the understanding and quantification for this problem by building on three key ideas: (i) the very strong increasing then decreasing trends in anthropogenic aerosol emissions over China in the 21st Century provide a unique opportunity for a detection and attribution of aerosol-induced cloudiness changes in the high-quality data available from the surface and from satel­lites; (ii) new modelling and data analysis tools are available, including better satellite retrievals of cloud microphysics and new regime definitions, as well as the new CMIP6 multi-model data; and (iii) the large-scale data analysis and global climate modelling is proposed to systematically learn from the regional, high-quality data and modelling. The project is possible thanks to the synergy between the expertise in the teams at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (regional focus) and the University of Leipzig (large-scale focus).