Substantial Diel Changes of Cloud Adjustments to Aerosols in Ship-tracks

Abstract

Human induced changes in atmospheric aerosols have introduced a climate forcing by modifying cloud droplet number concentration, liquid water, and cloud fraction. This forcing is subject to large uncertainties as cloud adjustments have not only complex dependence on background conditions, but also temporal fluctuations, especially those driven by diel variations in solar heating. However, direct observations of such diel changes are still limited. Here, we present observational evidence of substantial diel changes in the cloud adjustments to aerosols within ship tracks, linear lines of polluted clouds captured in satellite images. We developed a novel method to automatically determine the age of each ship-track segment and analyze cloud adjustments to aerosols. We show that more aged polluted clouds with extended nighttime exposure exhibit higher increases in cloud fraction. By contrast, liquid water path adjustments follow a non-monotonic pattern: they generally decrease with time before reversing trend in clouds formed at nighttime. Most of these diel contrasts are statistically significant and likely stem from differences in solar heating and cloud precipitation. The increase in cloud fraction adjustment suggests a larger aerosol effective radiative forcing, -0.1 to -0.4 W per meter squared, than the estimate without considering temporal variations, while the temporal changes in liquid water path adjustments may partially offset it. These findings underscore the importance of diel variations in aerosol cloud interactions. Our approach demonstrates that ship tracks, despite appearing as instantaneous observations, yield valuable insights into the temporal evolution of cloud adjustments.