The Southern Ocean Clouds,Radiation, Aerosol Transport Experimental Study
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THE SOUTHERN OCEAN CLOUDS, RADIATION, AEROSOL TRANSPORT EXPERIMENTAL STUDY THE SOCRATES PLANNING TEAM Roj Marchand, Robert Wood, Chris Bretherton, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Greg McFarquhar, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois Alain Protat, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia Patricia Quinn, NOAA PMEL, Seattle Steven Siems and Christian Jakob, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia Simon Alexander, Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia Bob Weller, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Massachusetts SOCRATES WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS AND CONTRIBUTORS Steve Ghan, Chris Hostetler, Gijs de Boer, Jay Mace, Pavlos Kollias, Richard Moore, Theodore Wilson, Dennis Hartmann, Jorgen Jensen, Jennifer Kay, Lynn Russell, Jacob Scheff, Elizabeth Maroon, Susannah Burrows, Sara Tucker, Jeff Stith, James Hudson, Joellen Russell, Yan Feng, Paul DeMott, Tom Lachlan‐Cope, Paulo Ceppi, Daniel Grosvenor, Daniel McCoy, Nicholas Meskhidze, Chris Fairall, Sarah Gille, Tim Bates, Cassandra Gaston, Erica Dolinar, Ryan Stanfield, Keith Williams, Alejandro Bodas‐Salcedo, Bob Rauber, Mike Harvey, Antony Clarke, Monica Orellana, Andreas Muhlbauer, Lorenzo Polvani, Yongxiang Hu, Scott Collis, Anna Gannet Hallar, Ying Li, Adrian James McDonald, Kalli Furtado, Gregory Roberts, Ann Fridlind, Andrew Ackerman, Carol Clayson, Benjamin Hillman 1 Preamble The Southern Ocean (SO) is the stormiest place on earth, buffeted by winds and waves that circle the ice of Antarctica, sheathed in clouds that mantle a dynamic ocean with rich ecosystems, and remote from most human influences. It influences the atmospheric and oceanic circulation of the entire southern hemisphere and beyond. The remoteness from anthropogenic and natural continental aerosol sources makes the SO a unique testbed for our understanding of cloud‐aerosol interaction, both for liquid and ice clouds, and the role of marine biogenic aerosols and their precursors. Weather forecast and climate models almost universally underpredict the amount of low‐lying cloud in the cold sector of mid‐latitude cyclonic storm systems, and this is particularly prominent over the SO, where such systems are ubiquitous year‐round. Climate models are challenged by uncertainties and biases in the simulation of SO clouds, aerosols, and air‐sea exchanges which trace to poor physical understanding of these processes in this unique component of the climate system. These biases affect the simulated global energy budget (Fig. 1), the location of tropical rainfall belts, and simulation of anthropogenic indirect aerosol effects on climate, and may impact simulated global cloud feedbacks and carbon‐cycle feedbacks on climate change. These biases further limit our understanding of the vast uptake of carbon dioxide into the SO. The Figure 1: CMIP5 model clouds do not reflect SO surrounds Antarctica and therefore interacts enough sunlight. Ensemble mean error for CMIP5 closely with massive ice shelves whose stability to models in shortwave radiation absorbed by the Earth climate change is uncertain but could be catastrophic. System. Positive values indicate too much shortwave radiation absorbed. There have been sparse and infrequent observations of clouds, aerosols, precipitation, radiation and the air‐sea interface in this region (see section 1). Consequently, much is unknown about atmospheric and oceanographic processes and their linkage in this region. We believe that the time is ripe for a major new in‐situ measurement campaign to study clouds, aerosols and the air‐sea interface in the SO. This white paper provides a more detailed motivation, including scientific themes and testable hypotheses, leading to a proposed implementation plan for the SO Clouds, Radiation, Aerosol Transport Experimental Study (SOCRATES). The scientific and modeling challenges addressed by SOCRATES are nationally and internationally acknowledged to be high priorities for climate science. The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) recently formulated six grand challenge problems, one of which is Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity1. WCRP note that ‘limited understanding of clouds is the major source of uncertainty in climate sensitivity, and also contributes substantially to persistent biases in modelled circulation systems’. A recent draft report of the Geosciences Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation has called out the Southern Ocean as one of five research frontiers, noting many of the themes central to SOCRATES. SOCRATES complements NSF’s Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM), running from 2014‐2020, which will focus on SO biochemistry, circulation, and carbon uptake. In particular, SOCRATES aims to stimulate atmospheric model improvements that will lead to a better representation of the entire earth system by reducing errors in SO surface energy balance and winds. This could improve not just the simulation of physical climate, but also of carbon uptake and other biogeochemical processes, as well as Antarctic sea ice and ice shelves. 1 See http://www.wcrp‐climate.org/index.php/gc‐clouds 2 Prior observations Table 1: Past intensive observational studies focused on the study of clouds and aerosols over the Southern Ocean Our current level of understanding of Field Experiment Time Range Primary Science Southern Ocean Cloud Microphysics cloud and aerosol processes over the Jul 1993; Cloud Experiments 40°- Characterization SO is based upon data gathered from Jan (SOCEX I & II) 43°S and seasonal previous observations and associated 1995 Boers et al. 1998 bounds model studies (Table 1 shows Aerosol Atmospheric influential intensive observations). The Characterization Nov/Dec 40°- Chemistry SOCEX aircraft campaigns, with two Experiment (ACE 1) 1995 55°S Secondary cloud phases: summer (Jul 1993, Boers et al. Bates et al. 1998 microphysics obs. 1998) and winter (Jan‐Feb 1995, Boers HIAPER Pole to Pole Global Atmospheric et al. 1996), measured cloud droplet Observations 5 flights 43°- Chemistry; concentrations that were a factor of 2‐3 (HIPPO) 2009-11 67°S secondary cloud Wofsy et al. 2011 microphysics obs. higher in summer than winter, suggestive of an important seasonal cycle in SO aerosol budgets and cloud‐aerosol interaction. The SOCEX measurements were conducted at latitudes 40‐43oS and did not have comprehensive aerosol composition measurements. The first Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE‐1, Bates et al. 1998a) was a comprehensive field experiment in 1995 involving two ground sites (Macquarie Island and Cape Grim), two research vessels, and the NSF/NCAR C‐130 aircraft aimed at improved quantification of chemical and physical processes controlling atmospheric aerosol relevant to radiative forcing and climate. ACE‐1 documented the role of dimethylsulfide (DMS)‐derived sulfate aerosols over the SO including the potential for new particle formation and growth (Bates et al. 1998b), vertical aerosol structure including subsidence of near‐cloud‐nucleated aerosols from the free troposphere (Clarke et al. 1998, Weber et al. 1998), and the importance of sea‐spray aerosol (Bates et al. 1998). However, sampling in ACE‐1 stayed north of 54oS and largely away from clouds. More recently, the HIPPO campaigns using the NSF/NCAR G‐V aircraft (Wofsy et al. 2011) have provided the only in‐situ dataset on clouds and aerosols south of Macquarie Island (54oS), with four transects extending down to latitudes of 67oS. Ground based atmospheric chemistry observations are ongoing at Lauder and Baring Head (New Zealand) and Cape Grim (Australia). A long record of surface aerosol measurements from Cape Grim (41oS, 145oE) led to an understanding of the strong seasonality in CCN concentrations with a likely cause being greater ocean biogeochemical activity during summer (Ayers and Gras 1991). 2. Climate model biases and observational knowledge gaps A central motivation for SOCRATES is to provide measurements to support the improvement of climate model simulations of planetary boundary layer (PBL) processes, shallow convection, clouds, and aerosols over the SO. Satellite observations identify systematic SO cloud and aerosol biases in climate models, and global modelling studies demonstrate the importance of these biases. A comprehensive suite of in‐situ measurements across the seasonal cycle is critical for supporting and testing improved process representations in the models, as well as for making better use of the satellite observations available to constrain models. Clouds over the SO are poorly represented in global climate model simulations (Trenberth and Fasullo 2010) and even present‐day reanalysis products (Naud et al. 2014). The CMIP5 ensemble mean error in annual mean absorbed shortwave radiation (Fig. 1) between 55oS and the Antarctic coast indicates systematically too much absorbed shortwave radiation, especially during Austral summer, inducing warm SST biases year‐round over the SO. This bias is mainly due to too little cloud, though sea‐ice may also contribute. The large radiation biases interact with the location of the Southern Hemisphere jet in climate models (Ceppi et al. 2012, 2014), influence the tropical circulation (Hwang and Frierson, 2013) and may correlate with climate sensitivity (Trenberth and Fasullo 2010). Recent analyses of model simulations suggest several possible reasons for the model radiative errors in the SO. A major contributor is a lack of clouds in the cold sectors of cyclones (Fig. 2). Errors in the representation of 3 mid‐topped clouds