Surface warming and wetting due to methane’s long-wave radiative effects muted by short-wave absorption

18686 7 101091 2 309334 document 101091 s41561-023-01144-z.pdf application/pdf 780760e11a67ef2a61322b885b95a6e0 MD5 10950090 2023-03-27 09:05:14 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/18686/1/s41561-023-01144-z.pdf 18686 1 1 application/pdf text en public cc_by_4

s41561-023-01144-z.pdf

published 101093 2 309346 document 101093 lightbox.jpg image/png da3bc8587765bbe2f6e67facadfe00c9 MD5 54911 2023-03-27 09:15:28 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/18686/2/lightbox.jpg 18686 2 2 image/png other Thumbnails conversion from text to thumbnail_lightbox en public

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http://eprints.org/relation/isVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/101091 http://eprints.org/relation/isVolatileVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/101091 http://eprints.org/relation/isIndexCodesVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/101091 archive 353 disk0/00/01/86/86 2023-03-27 09:06:55 2024-09-09 12:45:57 2023-03-27 09:06:55 article show Allen R.J. Zhao X. Randles C.A. Kramer R.J. Samset B.H. Smith C. 9291 0000-0003-0599-4633 Surface warming and wetting due to methane’s long-wave radiative effects muted by short-wave absorption pub ECE IACC Although greenhouse gases absorb primarily long-wave radiation, they also absorb short-wave radiation. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of methane short-wave absorption, which enhances its stratospherically adjusted radiative forcing by up to ~ 15%. The corresponding climate impacts, however, have been only indirectly evaluated and thus remain largely unquantified. Here we present a systematic, unambiguous analysis using one model and separate simulations with and without methane short-wave absorption. We find that methane short-wave absorption counteracts ~30% of the surface warming associated with its long-wave radiative effects. An even larger impact occurs for precipitation as methane short-wave absorption offsets ~60% of the precipitation increase relative to its long-wave radiative effects. The methane short-wave-induced cooling is due largely to cloud rapid adjustments, including increased low-level clouds, which enhance the reflection of incoming short-wave radiation, and decreased high-level clouds, which enhance outgoing long-wave radiation. The cloud responses, in turn, are related to the profile of atmospheric solar heating and corresponding changes in temperature and relative humidity. Despite our findings, methane remains a potent contributor to global warming, and efforts to reduce methane emissions are vital for keeping global warming well below 2 °C above preindustrial values. 2023-03-16 published Nature Publishing Group doi:10.1038/s41561-023-01144-z 3162 public Nature Geoscience TRUE 1752-0908 no info:eu-repo/semantics/article