Articles | Volume 18, issue 15
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-4899-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-4899-2025
Development and technical paper
 | 
11 Aug 2025
Development and technical paper |  | 11 Aug 2025

Assessing modifications to the Abdul-Razzak and Ghan aerosol activation parameterization (version ARG2000) to improve simulated aerosol–cloud radiative effects in the UK Met Office Unified Model (UM version 13.0)

Pratapaditya Ghosh, Katherine J. Evans, Daniel P. Grosvenor, Hyun-Gyu Kang, Salil Mahajan, Min Xu, Wei Zhang, and Hamish Gordon

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Cited articles

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Abdul-Razzak, H., Ghan, S. J., and Rivera-Carpio, C.: A parameterization of aerosol activation: 1. Single aerosol type, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 103, 6123–6131, https://doi.org/10.1029/97JD03735, 1998. a
Barahona, D., West, R. E. L., Stier, P., Romakkaniemi, S., Kokkola, H., and Nenes, A.: Comprehensively accounting for the effect of giant CCN in cloud activation parameterizations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 2467–2473, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-10-2467-2010, 2010. a
Baudin, M.: pyDOE, Github, https://github.com/tisimst/pyDOE (last access: 22 July 2025), 2015. a
Bellouin, N., Quaas, J., Gryspeerdt, E., Kinne, S., Stier, P., Watson-Parris, D., Boucher, O., Carslaw, K. S., Christensen, M., Daniau, A.-L., Dufresne, J.-L., Feingold, G., Fiedler, S., Forster, P., Gettelman, A., Haywood, J. M., Lohmann, U., Malavelle, F., Mauritsen, T., McCoy, D. T., Myhre, G., Mülmenstädt, J., Neubauer, D., Possner, A., Rugenstein, M., Sato, Y., Schulz, M., Schwartz, S. E., Sourdeval, O., Storelvmo, T., Toll, V., Winker, D., and Stevens, B.: Bounding Global Aerosol Radiative Forcing of Climate Change, Rev. Geophys., 58, e2019RG000660, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000660, 2020. a
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Short summary
The most popular algorithm for calculating cloud droplet number concentrations in climate models is sensitive to parameters that control simulated aerosol particle number concentrations at different sizes. We recommend small modifications to functions in the algorithm to improve its performance. Implementing the changes in the UK Met Office climate model reduced average bias in simulated global droplet number concentrations, leading to more reflected solar radiation and a net cooling effect.
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