Improving Aerosol Radiative Forcing and Climate in E3SM: Impacts of New Cloud Microphysics and Improved Wet Removal Treatments

Numerous Earth system models exhibit excessive aerosol effective forcing at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), including the Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). Here, in the context of the E3SM version 3 effort, the predicted particle property (P3) stratiform cloud microphysics scheme and an enhanced deep convection parameterization suite (ZM_plus) are implemented into E3SM. The ZM_plus includes a convective cloud microphysics scheme, a multi-scale coherent structure parameterization for mesoscale convective systems, and a revised cloud base mass flux formulation considering impacts of the large-scale environment. The P3 scheme improved cloud and radiation particularly over the Northern Hemisphere and the frequency of heavy precipitation over the tropics, and the ZM_plus improved clouds in the tropics. P3 decreases aerosol effective forcing by 0.15 W m⁻², while the ZM_plus increases it by 0.27 W m⁻², resulting from excessive direct (0.31 W m⁻²) and indirect forcing (−1.79 W m⁻²). The excessive aerosol forcings are due to aerosol overestimation associated with insufficient aerosol wet removal. By improving the physical treatments in the aerosol wet removal, we effectively mitigate anthropogenic aerosol overestimation and thus attenuate direct (0.09 W m⁻²) and indirect aerosol forcing (−1.52 W m⁻²). Adjustment to primary organic matter hygroscopicity reduces direct and indirect forcing to more reasonable values: −0.13 W m⁻² and −1.31 W m⁻², respectively. On climatology, improved aerosol treatments mitigate overestimation of aerosol optical depth.