Influence of Aerosol Embedded in Shallow Cumulus Cloud Fields on the Surface Solar Irradiance

Ubiquitous shallow cumulus clouds are associated with complex variability in surface solar irradiance (SSI). Aerosol embedded in the cloud field typically has a much smaller overall radiative effect, but can significantly perturb the shape of the SSI probability density function (PDF). These perturbations have important implications for several applications that utilize SSI, but are poorly quantified and are the subject of this study. Multiple cases of shallow cumulus cloud fields with embedded aerosol are simulated at the Southern Great Plains Atmospheric Observatory using large eddy simulation (LES). The LES-derived cloud and aerosol fields are then ingested into Monte Carlo three-dimensional (3D) radiative transfer to simulate SSI. We find a variety of perturbations to the SSI PDF that depend on aerosol presence and optical properties. The processes leading to these perturbations include extinction of the direct beam that often increases from the clear-sky region toward cloud edge due to aerosol hygroscopic growth, and scattering of radiation by aerosol into cloud shadows. The ability to predict the SSI PDF in the presence of aerosol is assessed by adding three representative aerosol optical properties into an existing machine learning framework. We show that machine learning accurately predicts the SSI PDF across a wide range of conditions with negligible computational expense. Importance metrics reveal the relatively high influence of aerosol optical properties in making the predictions. These new findings highlight the important role that aerosol plays in SSI variability for highly 3D cloud-aerosol environments and provides a computationally efficient route forward for its simulation.