Abstract
Abstract. Particles containing black carbon (BC), a strong absorbing substance, exert a rather uncertain direct and indirect radiative forcing in the atmosphere. To investigate the mass concentration and absorption properties of BC particles over central Europe, the model WRF-Chem was used at a resolution of 12 km in conjunction with a high-resolution BC emission inventory (EUCAARI 42-Pan-European Carbonaceous Aerosol Inventory; 1/8° × 1/16°). The model simulation was evaluated using measurements of equivalent soot carbon, absorption coefficients and particle number concentrations at seven sites within the German Ultrafine Aerosol Network, PM
Highlights
Black carbon (BC) particles are characterized by their ability to strongly absorb solar radiation across a broad spectrum of wavelengths (Bond and Bergstrom, 2006)
The modelled BC mass concentrations were compared to Csoot mass concentrations measured by Raman spectroscopy as described in Nordmann et al (2013)
The time series at the regional observation site Bösel and corresponding model values are shown in Fig. 3a for the model run R1 (R3 and R4 refer to additional model runs with scaled emissions as described later in detail in Sect. 3.1.5 and Table 2)
Summary
Black carbon (BC) particles are characterized by their ability to strongly absorb solar radiation across a broad spectrum of wavelengths (Bond and Bergstrom, 2006). After their emission from incomplete combustion, these particles have sizes around 100 nm (Rose et al, 2006), which may change during atmospheric transport due to ageing processes. S. Nordmann et al.: Atmospheric black carbon and warming effects and optical properties of BC-containing particles. Upon emission from combustion sources, BC-containing particles are usually hydrophobic and unlikely to act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN; Weingartner et al, 1997; Rose et al, 2011). On the other hand, when located below or above clouds, a BC-containing layer may enhance cloud cover by changing the local temperature field, which causes a negative semidirect effect (Koch and Del Genio, 2010)
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