What Does Nature Tell Us About Anthropogenic Aerosol Indirect Effects?
No abstract available
cloud regimes↗
Engineering topics
Wilcox, E.
Publications and source records attributed to Wilcox, E..
Surface Albedo Darkening from wildfires in Northern Sub-Saharan Africa
Wildfires are recognized as a key physical disturbance of terrestrial ecosystems and a major source of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols. They are known to produce changes in landscape patterns and lead to changes in surface albedo that can persist for long periods. Here, we estimate the darkening of surface albedo due to wildfires in different land cover ecosystems in the Northern Sub-Saharan Africa using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). We determined a decrease in albedo after fires over most land cover types (e.g. woody savannas: (-0.00352 0.00003) and savannas: (- 0.003910.00003), which together accounted for >86% of the total MODIS fire count between 2003 and 2011). Grasslands had a higher value (-0.00454 0.00003) than the savannas, but accounted for only about 5% of the total fire count. A few other land cover types (e.g. Deciduous broad leaf: (0.00062 0.00015), and barren: 0.00027 0.00019), showed an increase in albedo after fires, but accounted for less than 1% of the total fires. Albedo change due to wildfires is more important during the fire season (October-February). The albedo recovery progresses rapidly during the first year after fires, where savannas show the greatest recovery (>77%) within one year, while deciduous broadleaf, permanent wetlands and barren lands show the least one-year recovery (56%). The persistence of surface albedo darkening in most land cover types is limited to about six to seven years, after which at least 98% of the burnt pixels recover to their pre-fire albedo.
Wildfires↗
Radiative Forcing Over Ocean by Ship Wakes
Changes in surface albedo represent one of the main forcing agents that can counteract, to some extent, the positive forcing from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Here, we report on enhanced ocean reflectance from ship wakes over the Pacific Ocean near the California coast, where we determined, based on airborne radiation measurements that ship wakes can increase reflected sunlight by more than 100%. We assessed the importance of this increase to climate forcing, where we estimated the global radiative forcing of ship wakes to be -0.00014 plus or minus 53% Watts per square meter assuming a global distribution of 32331 ships of size of greater than or equal to 100000 gross tonnage. The forcing is smaller than the forcing of aircraft contrails (-0.007 to +0.02 Watts per square meter), but considering that the global shipping fleet has rapidly grown in the last five decades and this trend is likely to continue because of the need of more inter-continental transportation as a result of economic globalization, we argue that the radiative forcing of wakes is expected to be increasingly important especially in harbors and coastal regions.
Gatebe, Charles K.↗