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[1] The study uses satellite observations, global assimilated aerosol data sets, Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABC) observatories, a Monte Carlo aerosol-cloud-radiation model and a regional chemical transport model (STEM-2K) to characterize the spatial extent of brown clouds, regional and megacity ABC hot spots, chemical composition and the direct radiative forcing. It presents the first annual cycle of aerosol observations and forcing from the ABC observatories in the Indo-Asia-Pacific regions. East Asia, IndoGangetic Plains, Indonesian region, southern Africa and the Amazon basin are the regional hot spots defined by the criteria that anthropogenic aerosol optical depths (AODs) should exceed 0.3 and absorbing AOD > 0.03. Over these hot spots, as well as in other polluted oceanic regions, the EC mass exceeds 0.5 mg m À3 , the OC mass exceeds 2 mg m À3 and sulfate mass exceeds 10 mg m À3 from the surface to 3 km. The brown clouds also have strong seasonal dependence. In the tropics the seasonal dependence is driven by pollution accumulating during the dry seasons, December to February in Northern Hemisphere tropics and June to August in Southern Hemisphere tropics. In the extratropics the pollution peaks during the summer. The brown cloud problem is not restricted to the tropical regions. Over the eastern half of US and western Europe the AODs exceeds 0.2 and absorption AODs exceed 0.02. Brown clouds also extend well into the western Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean reaching as far south as 60°S and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. The largest total SO 2 emission occurs over China and US, while SO 2 emission per unit surface area is maximum over Germany and England. The largest total EC and OC emissions occur over China, but the largest OC emission per unit surface area occur over India. As a result, the maximum negative annual mean TOA direct forcing is over India and Germany. The surface annual-diurnal mean dimming over the regional hot spots is of the order of À10 W m À2 and À20 W m À2 over megacity hotpots. Citation: Ramanathan, V., et al. (2007), Atmospheric brown clouds: Hemispherical and regional variations in long-range transport, absorption, and radiative forcing,

Abstract. We coordinated a ground-based network that has been in use since 1997 to observe Asian dust during springtime. Huge Asian dust events that occurred in the middle of April 1998 were captured by this network. In this paper we present the organization of the network; a description of the instruments, including the lidar, sky radiometer, and optical particle counter; and the results of the observation, and offer discussions regarding the transport mechanism of Asian dust in east Asia using an on-line tracer model. We discussed the time series of the surface concentration and the height distribution of the dust. A cutoff cyclone generated during the dust episode was responsible for trapping and sedimentation during the transportation of the Asian dust, particularly in the southern parts of China and Japan. Horizontal dust images derived from NOAA/AVHRR clearly revealed the structure of the vortex. The lidar network observation confirmed the general pattern of dust height distribution in this event; the height of the major dust layer was about 3 km over Japan but was higher (4 to 5 km) in Seoul and Hefei. A thin dust layer in the upper troposphere was also commonly observed in Hefei and Japan. Evidence of the coexistence of dust and cirrus was shown by the polarization lidar. The lidar network observation of Asian dust and satellite remote sensing provide key information for the study of the transport mechanism of Asian dust. Further extension of the lidar network toward the interior of the continent and the Pacific Rim would reveal the greater global mechanism of the transportation.

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[1] This article introduces an international regional experiment, East Asian Regional Experiment 2005 (EAREX 2005), carried out in March-April 2005 in the east Asian region, as one of the first phase regional experiments under the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) project, and discusses some outstanding features of aerosol characteristics and its direct radiative forcing in the east Asian region, with some comparison with the results obtained in another ABC early phase regional experiment, ABC Maldives Monsoon Experiment (APMEX) conducted in the south Asian region. Time series of aerosol optical thickness (AOT), single scattering albedo (SSA), aerosol extinction cross section profile and CO concentration shows that air pollutants and mineral dust were transported every 5 to 7 days in the EAREX region to produce SSA values at wavelength of 700 nm from 0.86 to 0.96 and large clear-sky shortwave forcing efficiency at 500 nm from 60 W m À2 to 90 W m À2 , though there are some unexplained inconsistencies depending on the evaluation method. The simulated whole-sky total forcing in the EAREX region is À1 to À2 W m À2 at TOA and À2 to À10 W m À2 at surface in March 2005 which is smaller in magnitude than in the APMEX region, mainly because of large cloud fraction in this region (0.70 at Gosan versus 0.51 at Hanimadhoo in the ISCCP total cloud fraction). We suggest there may be an underestimation of the forcing due to overestimation of the simulated cloudiness and aerosol scale height. On the other hand, the possible error in the simulated surface albedo may cause an overestimation of the magnitude of the forcing over the land area. We also propose simple formulae for shortwave radiative forcing to understand the role of aerosol parameters and surface condition to determine the aerosol forcing. Such simple formulae are useful to check the consistency among the observed quantities.