Observing the timescales of aerosol–cloud interactions in snapshot satellite images

26 April 2021

Cloud responses to aerosol are time-sensitive, but this development is rarely observed. This study uses isolated aerosol perturbations from ships to measure this development and shows that macrophysical (width, cloud fraction, detectability) and microphysical (droplet number) properties of ship tracks vary strongly with time since emission, background cloud and meteorological state. This temporal development should be considered when constraining aerosol–cloud interactions with observations.

The press release by the Imperial College London can be found at: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/220155/ship-tracks-show-aerosols-affect-clouds/

Contact: Edward Gryspeerdt (e.gryspeerdt@imperial.ac.uk)