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Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 12, 14009-14042, 2012
www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/14009/2012/ doi:10.5194/acpd-12-14009-2012 © Author(s) 2012. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. |
Atmospheric impacts on climatic variability of surface incident solar radiation
1State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, Beijing, China
2Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
3Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
4Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Abstract. The Earth's climate system is driven by surface incident solar radiation (Rs). Direct measurements have shown that Rs has undergone significant decadal variations. However, a large fraction of the global land surface is not covered by these observations. Satellite-derived Rs has a good global coverage but is of low accuracy in its depiction of decadal variability. This paper shows that daily to decadal variations of Rs, from both aerosols and cloud properties, can be accurately estimated using globally available measurements of Sunshine Duration (SunDu). In particular, SunDu shows that since the late 1980's Rs has brightened over Europe due to decreases in aerosols but dimmed over China due to their increases. We find that variation of cloud cover controls Rs at a monthly scale but that aerosols determine the variability of Rs at a decadal time scale, in particular, over Europe and China. Because of its global availability and long-term history, SunDu can provide an accurate and continuous proxy record of Rs, filling in values for the blank areas that are not covered by direct measurements. By merging direct measurements collected by global energy budget archive with those derived from SunDu, we obtain a good coverage of Rs over the Northern Hemisphere. From this data, the average increase of Rs from 1982 to 2008 is estimated to be 0.87 W m−2 per decade.
Citation: Wang, K., Dickinson, R. E., Wild, M., and Liang, S.: Atmospheric impacts on climatic variability of surface incident solar radiation, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 12, 14009-14042, doi:10.5194/acpd-12-14009-2012, 2012.