ALIC²E Research Methods
Our research methods are diverse and are tailored for the question that we want to address. Our tool box includes conducting atmospheric model experiments with different process-complexity and for different regions, applying machine learning techniques and theoretical approaches, using space- and ground-based observational data, and collecting new measurements at land and sea.
OUR Research methods
- Weather and climate modelling
- Machine learning and automated detection algorithms
- Portable Meteorological Observatory (PortMeteO): Remote sensing and in-situ measurements on board of research vessels
- Satellite and reanalysis data
Aerosol Forcing
The magnitude of the radiative forcing of anthropogenic aerosols remains one of the key uncertainties in our understanding of climate change. To better understand the climate model spread in aerosol radiative forcing, the simple plumes parameterisation for optical properties of anthropogenic aerosols and an associated effect on clouds was developed. The code was originally designed for use in climate model experiments for the “Radiative Forcing Model Inter-comparison Project” (RFMIP) endorsed by CMIP6. I led the coordinated RFMIP study on the aerosol radiative forcing with MACv2-SP (RFMIP-SpAer, Fiedler et al., 2023). The parameterisation MACv2-SP was implemented in several CMIP6 models for representing anthropogenic aerosols for contributing experiments on past and potential future climate changes for AR6 and has been used for several different applications since. We support the uptake of the parameterisation by providing regularly updates and extensions of the input data for the parameterisation.
The code of MACv2-SP and the historical data is available as of Stevens et al. (2017). We published the future scenarios for MACv2-SP based on CMIP6 emission data in the of Fiedler et al. (2019) and provided updated future scenarios to account for the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in support of CovidMIP in the of Fiedler et al. (2021).
The next updated historical data for simple plumes (SPv2) will be consistent with the CMIP7 emissions. This data is currently in preparation via the CMIP Climate Forcing Task Team and is financially supported by the EU project EXPECT.