Technical Note: Evaluating a simple parameterization of radiative shortwave forcing from surface albedo change
Journal article, Peer reviewed
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2359726Utgivelsesdato
2013Metadata
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Originalversjon
Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics 2013, 13(22):11169-11174 10.5194/acp-13-11169-2013Sammendrag
Land-use activities affect Earth’s energy balance
not only via biogeochemical emissions, but also through perturbations
in surface albedo, the latter of which is often excluded
in impact assessment studies. In this short technical
note, we present and compare a simple model for estimating
shortwave radiative forcings at the top of Earth’s atmosphere
to a more sophisticated 8-stream radiative transfer
model based on a discrete ordinate method. Outcomes
from monthly albedo change simulations for ten globally distributed
regions and a single year revealed that the simple
model – based on a single exogenously supplied meteorological
variable – performed quite well, having a sample correlation
coefficient of 0.93 and a normalized root mean square
error of 7.2 %. Simple models like the one presented here can
offer an attractive and efficient means for non-experts to begin
including albedo change considerations in climate impact
assessment studies enveloping land use activities