Physics Commons^™

Radiative Absorption Enhancements By Black Carbon Controlled By Particle-To-Particle Heterogeneity In Composition, Laura Fierce, Timothy B. Onasch, Christopher D. Cappa, Claudio Mazzoleni, Swarup China, Janarjan Bhandari, Et Al.

Michigan Tech Publications

Black carbon (BC) absorbs solar radiation, leading to a strong but uncertain warming effect on climate. A key challenge in modeling and quantifying BC’s radiative effect on climate is predicting enhancements in light absorption that result from internal mixing between BC and other aerosol components. Modeling and laboratory studies show that BC, when mixed with other aerosol components, absorbs more strongly than pure, uncoated BC; however, some ambient observations suggest more variable and weaker absorption enhancement. We show that the lower-than-expected enhancements in ambient measurements result from a combination of two factors. First, the often used spherical, concentric core-shell approximation …