How Aerosol Formation Helps Brighten Clouds, Balance Climate

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Small aerosol particles help in “brightening” of clouds, enabling them to alter Earth’s radiative balance and ultimately its climate, according to a study.

What is Aerosol?

Aerosols are minute particles suspended in the atmosphere.
When these particles are sufficiently large, we notice their presence as they scatter and absorb sunlight. Their scattering of sunlight can reduce visibility (haze) and redden sunrises and sunsets.
Aerosols are short-lived, unlike greenhouse gases that persist and accumulate in the atmosphere for longer period.

When deep, convective clouds in the tropics carry gases high into the atmosphere, they form small aerosol particles in a process called gas-toparticle conversion.
As they condense, they grow big enough to brighten lower-level cloud in the lower troposphere.
This gas-to-particle conversion brightens clouds in the tropics over both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

These brighter clouds reflect more energy from the sun back to space.
Further, this formation of new particle covers about 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface, which means some of the current climate models underestimate the cooling impact of some clouds.
Researchers have come to the conclusion that aerosols may be weakening the Indian monsoon even more than greenhouse gases
Monsoon winds and circulation are weakened as both land and sea are cooled due to aerosol accumulation.

Cloud whitening, also called cloud brightening or marine cloud brightening, untested geoengineering techniq ue designed to increase the reflectance of Earth’s cloud cover to reduce the amount of incoming solar radiation striking Earth’s surface.

The ability of stratospheric sulfate aerosols to create a global dimming effect has made them a possible candidate for use in solar radiation management climate engineering projects to limit the effect and impact of climate change due to rising levels of greenhouse gases