Aerosol Effective Radiative Forcing in the Online Aerosol Coupled CAS-FGOALS-f3-L Climate Model

Abstract

The effective radiative forcing (ERF) of anthropogenic aerosol can be more representative of the eventual climate response than other radiative forcing. We incorporate aerosol–cloud interaction into the Chinese Academy of Sciences Flexible Global Ocean–Atmosphere–Land System (CAS-FGOALS-f3-L) by coupling an existing aerosol module named the Spectral Radiation Transport Model for Aerosol Species (SPRINTARS) and quantified the ERF and its primary components (i.e., effective radiative forcing of aerosol-radiation interactions (ERFari) and aerosol-cloud interactions (ERFaci)) based on the protocol of current Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6). The spatial distribution of the shortwave ERFari and ERFaci in CAS-FGOALS-f3-L are comparable with that of most available CMIP6 models. The global mean 2014–1850 shortwave ERFari in CAS-FGOALS-f3-L (−0.27 W m−2) is close to the multi-model means in 4 available models (−0.29 W m−2), whereas the assessing shortwave ERFaci (−1.04 W m−2) and shortwave ERF (−1.36 W m−2) are slightly stronger than the multi-model means, illustrating that the CAS-FGOALS-f3-L can reproduce the aerosol radiation effect reasonably well. However, significant diversity exists in the ERF, especially in the dominated component ERFaci, implying that the uncertainty is still large.