A Review of Data Assimilation on Aerosol Optical, Radiative, and Climatic Effects Study

Aerosol plays an important role in many significant environmental and climate-related issues. Accurate simulation and prediction are critical to understanding aerosol behaviors, aerosol processes, and aerosol effects. However, large uncertainties in the simplified parameterizations of aerosol processes, the optical calculations, and radiation calculations hinder the accurate simulations of aerosol distributions and their influences. The observation limitations in spatio-temporal scales also make it difficult to reproduce the three-dimensional aerosol features. The aerosol data assimilation method can combine both the modeling information with multi-platform aerosol observations to improve the accurate predictions and behaviors of aerosols, hence optimizing the evaluations of aerosol radiative and climatic effects. In this paper, we briefly introduce the developments of the principal methods for aerosol data assimilation and their implementations in investigating the aerosol optical properties, radiative effects, and climatic effects in China. The challenges and development trends in improvements of aerosol data assimilation are also highlighted.