Satellite detection of aerosol-produced temperature change

摘要

Aerosol forcing has direct, indirect and semidirect effects on radiation and can thus potentially impact recent global temperature changes. However, it is extremely challenging to evaluate the magnitude of aerosol forcing because various factors interact in a complex way to produce temperature change. With the aid of satellite and ground observations, this study, we examine whether aerosols can produce temperature change. Temperature change produced by aerosols occurs when there is a strong aerosol-temperature correlation and a significant aerosol trend. Our results show that aerosols can cause a regional temperature change of 0.027 ± 0.038 Kyear~(-1). However, the dominant impact occurs over a very small region (1.65%) of the land, resulting in a minor forcing effect (0.0004 ± 0.0006 Kyear~(-1)) on global temperature change. It may be concluded that aerosol forcing only has a significant effect regionally and that the global impact of aerosol forcing appears to have been overestimated in some previous studies.