The standard NEWS A-Train Integratated Aerosol, Cloud, and Radiation Data Product (CERES, MODIS, and Calipso) includes the direct radiative forcing by aerosols; but this is sorely hampered by the lack of solid information on single scattering albedo, which is estimated from a CTM (chemical transport model, here MATCH). While CTMs are fairly good at estimating the column fractionation of sulfate, dust, etc., they are weak on the height profile, too.
For a traveling subset of the A-train domain, we will provide a more accurate direct forcing by integrating single scattering albedo from AERONET and MFRSR; a daily, spotty chase to match the nadir A-Train with the closest ground sites. A typical day will have a few collocations worldwide that are sufficient to use ground data to characterize aerosol absorption, which has less spatial variation than optical depth. The Schuster-Dubovik inversion of Cimel (now as internal mixture of sulfate and BC) will be modified to account for dust. The challenging cloudy-sky direct forcing will be checked by comparing Jins COART simulations of reflected broadband (narrowband) radiances with CERES (MODIS) to confirm new cloud retrievals (accounting for aerosols) by Minnis. A global statistical analysis of indirect forcing will be based on the Calipso vertical profile of aerosols, the sulfate loading from the chemical transport model, and the new MODIS retrievals of cloud optical properties. We will have a better estimate of quantity of potential nucleating agent (affecting droplet size) and aerosol absorber (affecting cloud lifetime) at the very altitude of the clouds.
