Revised historical Northern Hemisphere black carbon emissions based on inverse modeling of ice core records

Sabine Eckhardt (), Ignacio Pisso, Nikolaos Evangeliou, Christine Groot Zwaaftink, Andreas Plach, Joseph R. McConnell, Michael Sigl, Meri Ruppel, Christian Zdanowicz, Saehee Lim, Nathan Chellman, Thomas Opel, Hanno Meyer, Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Margit Schwikowski and Andreas Stohl
Additional contact information
Sabine Eckhardt: NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
Ignacio Pisso: NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
Nikolaos Evangeliou: NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
Christine Groot Zwaaftink: NILU - Norwegian Institute for Air Research
Andreas Plach: University of Vienna
Joseph R. McConnell: Desert Research Institute
Michael Sigl: University of Bern
Meri Ruppel: Finnish Meteorological Institute
Christian Zdanowicz: Uppsala University
Saehee Lim: Chungnam National University
Nathan Chellman: Desert Research Institute
Thomas Opel: Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Hanno Meyer: Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Jørgen Peder Steffensen: Niels Bohr institute, University of Copenhagen
Margit Schwikowski: Paul Scherrer Institut
Andreas Stohl: University of Vienna

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Black carbon emitted by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass has a net warming effect in the atmosphere and reduces the albedo when deposited on ice and snow; accurate knowledge of past emissions is essential to quantify and model associated global climate forcing. Although bottom-up inventories provide historical Black Carbon emission estimates that are widely used in Earth System Models, they are poorly constrained by observations prior to the late 20th century. Here we use an objective inversion technique based on detailed atmospheric transport and deposition modeling to reconstruct 1850 to 2000 emissions from thirteen Northern Hemisphere ice-core records. We find substantial discrepancies between reconstructed Black Carbon emissions and existing bottom-up inventories which do not fully capture the complex spatial-temporal emission patterns. Our findings imply changes to existing historical Black Carbon radiative forcing estimates are necessary, with potential implications for observation-constrained climate sensitivity.

Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-35660-0

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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35660-0

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