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Direct climate forcing by organic aerosols was typically considered to be of the scattering-type up until the early 2000s, when the importance of organic aerosol-induced light absorption,
specifically by a fraction termed brown carbon (BrC), was first understood. Despite several
advancements since then, climate models are still unable to properly parameterize BrC forcing,
thereby biasing aerosol climate forcing estimates significantly. The crucial reason for this lies
in the highly dynamic nature of BrC optical properties that vary with emission, transport and
atmospheric processing conditions, leading to poorly-constrained links between its
chromophoric composition and resultant climate-relevant optical parameters. In this talk, I will
discuss our efforts to uncover this linkage for aerosol BrC and its constituents in the eastern
Indo-Gangetic Plain using a coupled chemical-optical measurement and receptor modelling
approach. |