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Dominant role of mineral dust in cirrus cloud formation revealed by global-scale measurements

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 177–183 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Airborne mineral dust particles can act as natural seeds for cirrus clouds in the upper troposphere. However, the atmospheric abundance of dust is unconstrained in cirrus-forming regions, hampering our ability to predict these radiatively important clouds. Here we present global-scale measurements of dust aerosol abundance in the upper troposphere and incorporate these into a detailed cirrus-formation model. We show that dust aerosol initiates cirrus clouds throughout the extra-tropics in all seasons and dominates cirrus formation in the Northern Hemisphere (75–93% of clouds seasonally). Using a global transport model with improved dust treatment, we also explore which of Earth’s deserts are the largest contributors of dust aerosol to cirrus-forming regions. We find that the meteorological environment downstream of each emission region modulates dust atmospheric lifetime and transport efficiency to the upper troposphere so that source contributions are disproportionate to emissions. Our findings establish the critical role of dust in Earth’s climate system through the formation of cirrus clouds.

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Fig. 1: Global-scale airborne sampling of mineral dust aerosol during four NASA ATom campaigns.
Fig. 2: Dust aerosol measurements and simulations during ATom1 in Aug. 2016.
Fig. 3: Annual cycle of UT dust sourced from each desert emission zone from the revised CESM/CARMA model.
Fig. 4: Predicting cirrus formation by combining in situ measurements with cloud–aerosol simulations.
Fig. 5: Mineral dust’s role in global cirrus cloud formation evaluated from all ATom deployments.

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Data availability

In situ data and model output for this study are publically available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2006. ATom aircraft data are publically available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1925.

Code availability

Code for the CESM model is publically available at http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/cesm1.0/. Code for the GEOS model is publically available at https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/GEOS_systems/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Dollner and B. Weinzierl for cloud particle measurements to exclude cloudy flight segments; M. Richardson, F. Erdesz and D. Thomson for technical support; and D. Cziczo for valuable input. The ATom mission was supported by NASA’s Earth System Science Pathfinder Program EVS-2 funding. Participation in the ATom mission by K.D.F., G.P.S., C.J.W., C.A.B., D.M.M. and E.R. was supported by NOAA climate funding and NASA award NNH15AB12I. P.Y. was supported by the second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP, 2019QZKK0604). The CESM project is supported partly by the National Science Foundation. A.K. was supported by the Austrian Science Fund’s Erwin Schrodinger Fellowship J-3613. GEOS development in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office is funded by NASA’s Modeling, Analysis and Prediction (MAP) program. Resources supporting GEOS were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center. H.B. was supported by NASA award NNX17AG31G. P.R.C. was supported by the MAP-funded Chemistry-Climate Modeling (CCM) project (600-17-6985).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemical Sciences Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO, USA

    Karl D. Froyd, Pengfei Yu, Gregory P. Schill, Charles A. Brock, Agnieszka Kupc, Christina J. Williamson, Eric J. Jensen, Eric Ray, Karen H. Rosenlof & Daniel M. Murphy

  2. Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Karl D. Froyd, Pengfei Yu, Gregory P. Schill, Christina J. Williamson, Eric J. Jensen & Eric Ray

  3. Institute for Environment and Climate Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Pengfei Yu

  4. Faculty of Physics, Aerosol Physics and Environmental Physics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Agnieszka Kupc

  5. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Huisheng Bian, Anton S. Darmenov & Peter R. Colarco

  6. University of Maryland at Baltimore County, Baltimore County, MD, USA

    Huisheng Bian

  7. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, USA

    Glenn S. Diskin

  8. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    ThaoPaul Bui

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Contributions

K.D.F. wrote the paper with contributions from all authors. K.D.F., G.P.S., C.A.B., A.K., C.J.W., D.M.M., G.S.D. and T.B. collected airborne data. P.Y. and K.H.R. provided CESM/CARMA model results. H.B., A.S.D. and P.R.C. provided GEOS model results. E.R. provided forward trajectory results. E.J.J. provided cirrus model results.

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Correspondence to Karl D. Froyd.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Amato Evan, Trude Storelvmo and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Froyd, K.D., Yu, P., Schill, G.P. et al. Dominant role of mineral dust in cirrus cloud formation revealed by global-scale measurements. Nat. Geosci. 15, 177–183 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00901-w

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