Chemistry–climate interactions of aerosol nitrate from lightning

摘要: Abstract. Lightning represents one of the dominant emission sources for NOx in troposphere. The direct release oxidised nitrogen upper troposphere does not only affect ozone formation, but also chemical and microphysical properties aerosol particles this region. This study investigates impact LNOx emissions on upper-tropospheric nitrate using a global chemistry climate model. simulation results show substantial influence lightning mixing ratios more than 50 %. In addition to nitrate, substantially affects oxidising capacity atmosphere with implications gas-phase sulfate formation new particle conjunction condensation nitrates, differences size distribution occur as consequence lightning. has extinction cloud optical properties. While is generally slightly enhanced due emissions, response clouds ambiguous compensating effects both liquid ice clouds. Resulting shortwave flux perturbations are ∼ −100 mW m−2 determined from several sensitivity scenarios, an uncertainty range almost 50 % be defined large internal variability system uncertainties multitude involved processes. Despite clear statistical significance concentrations, robustness findings gradually decreases towards determination radiative perturbations.