Past and future direct radiative forcing of nitrate aerosol in East Asia

Nitrate as a rapidly increasing aerosol species in recent years affects the present climate and potentially has large implications on the future climate. In this study, the long-term direct radiative forcing (DRF) of nitrate aerosol is investigated using State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG) atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) and the aerosol dataset simulated by a chemical transport model with focus on East Asia. The DRF due to other aerosols, especially sulfate, is also evaluated for comparisons. Although the chemical transport model underestimates the magnitudes of nitrate and sulfate aerosols when compared with Chinese site observations, some insights into the significances of nitrate climate effects still emerge. The present-day global annual mean all-sky DRF of nitrate is calculated to be −0.025 W m−2 relative to the preindustrial era, which is much weaker than −0.37 W m−2 for sulfate. However, nitrate DRF may become increasingly important in the future especially over East Asia, given the expectation that decreasing trend in global sulfate continues while the projected nitrate maintains at the present level for a mid-range forcing scenario and even be a factor of two larger by the end of the 21st century for high emission scenarios. For example, the anthropogenic nitrate DRF of −2.0 W m−2 over eastern China could persist until the 2050s, and nitrate is projected to account for over 60 % of total anthropogenic aerosol DRF over East Asia by 2100. In addition, we illustrate that the regional nitrate DRF and its seasonal variation are sensitive to meteorological parameters, in particular the relative humidity and cloud amount. It thus remains a need for climate models to include more realistically nitrate aerosol in projecting future climate changes.