Aerosols and Clouds in Chemical Transport Models and Climate Models

Clouds exert major influences on both short- and longwave radiation as well as on the hydrological cycle. Accurate representation of clouds in climate models poses a major problem because of the high sensitivity of radiative transfer and water cycle to cloud properties and processes, an incomplete understanding of these processes, and the wide range of scales over which these processes occur. Small changes in the amount, altitude, physical thickness, and/or microphysical properties of clouds that occur as a result of human influence can exert changes in Earth's radiation budget comparable to the radiative forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, thus either partly offsetting or enhancing the warming due to these gases. Because clouds form on aerosol particles, changes in the amount and/or composition of aerosols affect clouds in various ways. The forcing of the radiation balance due to aerosol-cloud interactions (indirect aerosol effect) has large uncertainties because a variety of important processes are not well understood, precluding their accurate representation in models