Hi,

good question. This depends on what kind of data you want to have.

And always keep in mind that the term "aerosol radiative forcing" only applies to changes in the Earth radiation budget introduced by anthropogenic aerosols.

Do you want to have a global map of radiative forcing values or do you want to compute the forcing yourself from maps of aerosol concentrations?

If you want to have maps of aerosol radiative forcing, you can for example take output from global aerosol climate models, such as those in the AEROCOM intiative. (See link below). However, you have to keep in mind that aerosol radiative forcing strongly varies from model to model, so it might be best to look at the model mean.

If you want to compute the aerosol radiative forcing yourself, e.g with the use of a radiative transfer model, you could take a look at this current aerosol climatology:

Kinne, S., D. O’Donnel, P. Stier, S. Kloster, K. Zhang, H. Schmidt, S. Rast, M. Giorgetta, T. F. Eck, and B. Stevens (2013), MAC-v1: A new global aerosol climatology for climate studies, J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., 5, 704–740, doi:10.1002/jame.20035.

You can also take a look at the most current IPCC Assessment Report, Chapter 8.

Hope this helps!

Cheers, Karsten

http://aerocom.met.no/aerocomhome.html

Hi,

good question. This depends on what kind of data you want to have.

And always keep in mind that the term "aerosol radiative forcing" only applies to changes in the Earth radiation budget introduced by anthropogenic aerosols.

Do you want to have a global map of radiative forcing values or do you want to compute the forcing yourself from maps of aerosol concentrations?

If you want to have maps of aerosol radiative forcing, you can for example take output from global aerosol climate models, such as those in the AEROCOM intiative. (See link below). However, you have to keep in mind that aerosol radiative forcing strongly varies from model to model, so it might be best to look at the model mean.

If you want to compute the aerosol radiative forcing yourself, e.g with the use of a radiative transfer model, you could take a look at this current aerosol climatology:

Kinne, S., D. O’Donnel, P. Stier, S. Kloster, K. Zhang, H. Schmidt, S. Rast, M. Giorgetta, T. F. Eck, and B. Stevens (2013), MAC-v1: A new global aerosol climatology for climate studies, J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., 5, 704–740, doi:10.1002/jame.20035.

You can also take a look at the most current IPCC Assessment Report, Chapter 8.

Hope this helps!

Cheers, Karsten

http://aerocom.met.no/aerocomhome.html

Once you have clarified the scope and purpose of your research, following the recommendations of Karsten, you may also want to explore the numerous publications that have been generated on the basis of the MISR instrument. You'll find an exhaustive list at

https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/peerReviewed/

where you can select 'Aerosol Studies' and then browse by year of publication. The MISR Gallery also includes examples of global aerosol products which may stimulate your interest, such as

https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/collectionImagery/?ImageID=108&Filter=Off&ThemeSort=&TypeSort=

and

https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/collectionImagery/?ImageID=96&Filter=Off&ThemeSort=&TypeSort=

both of which are rather old by now, but these give you a taste of what can be achieved, now that MISR has accumulated 15 years of observations (it is still operational as of this writing).

Hi Karsten !

First of all, thanks a lot for your answer. And I believe we actually met each other once at Stefan's office when he was trying to explain his projects to me.

I will definitely check the potential approaches you suggested :)

I want to compute the map myself from the models and of course the literature would be a great validation or quality check for that.

If I do encounter further questions, I will let you know.

Thanks again!

Fei

Dear Michel,

Thank you very much for the useful links ! Definitely more specified than those webs I checked previously.

Fei

You can use MODIS AOD data. To gain more information about this product, you can refer to the following publication:

Article Investigation and validation of MODIS SST in the northern Persian Gulf