AsianScientist (Mar. 16, 2018) – A research group in Japan has used the K computer, a supercomputer at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS), to accurately calculate the effects of aerosols on clouds in a climate model. They published their findings in Nature Communications.
Global climate is a tremendously complex phenomenon, and researchers are making painstaking progress, year by year, to try to develop ever more accurate models. Aerosols play a key role in cloud formation, as they provide the ‘seeds’—called cloud condensation nuclei—that allow clouds to form. These aerosols also affect the life cycle of clouds, which make them important elements of research on climate change, as they partially counteract the heating action of greenhouse gases.
It was previously believed that increasing aerosol density would always lead to more clouds, but recent satellite observations showed that this is not necessarily true. It is now understood that, due to temperature differences between the top and bottom layers of clouds, there is a delicate balance of evaporation and condensation, with aerosols in the lower parts of the clouds promoting cloud formation, but those in the upper parts allowing the water to evaporate.
In this study, researchers led by Dr. Yousuke Sato of RIKEN AICS combined a model that simulates the entire global weather over a year, at a horizontal resolution of just 14 kilometers, with a simulation of how the aerosols behave within clouds. Unlike conventional models, which show a uniform increase in clouds over the earth when there is an increase in aerosols, the high-resolution model, which takes into account the vertical processes inside clouds, accurately depicted how large areas experience a drop in cloud cover.
“It was very gratifying to see that we could use a powerful supercomputer to accurately model the microphysics of clouds, giving a more accurate picture of how clouds and aerosols behave in the real world. In the future, we hope to use even more powerful computers to allow climate models to have more certainty in climate prediction,” said Sato.
The article can be found at: Sato et al. (2018) Aerosol Effects on Cloud Water Amounts Were Successfully Simulated by a Global Cloud-system Resolving Model.
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Source: RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science; Photo: Shutterstock.
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