Quantifying organic aerosol single scattering albedo over the tropical biomass burning regions

Despite growing evidence of light-absorbing organic aerosols (OAs), their contribution to the Earth's radiative budget is still poorly understood. In this study we derived a new empirical relationship that binds OA single scattering albedo (SSA), which is the ratio of light scattering to extinction, with sulfate + nitrate aerosol optical depth (AOD) and applied this method to estimate OA SSA over the tropical biomass burning regions. This method includes division of the attribution of black carbon (BC) and OA absorption aerosol optical depths from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) observation and determination of the fine-mode ratio of sea-salt and dust AODs from several atmospheric chemistry models. Our best estimate of OA SSA over the tropical biomass burning regions is 0.91 at 550 nm. Uncertainties associated with observations and models permit a value range of 0.82-0.93. Furthermore, by using the estimated OA SSA and comprehensive observations including AERONET, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR), we examined the first global estimate of sulfate + nitrate AOD through a semi-observational approach. The global mean sulfate + nitrate AOD of 0.017 is in the lower range of the values obtained from 21 models participated in AeroCom phase II. The results imply that most aerosol models as well as climate models, which commonly use OA SSA of 0.96-1.0, have so far ignored light absorption by OAs and have overestimated light scattering by sulfate + nitrate aerosols. This indicates that the actual aerosol direct radiative forcing should be less negative than currently believed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.