Correction to ‘stratospheric heating by potential geoengineering aerosols’

Abstract

[1] In the paper “Stratospheric heating by potential geoengineering aerosols” by Angus Ferraro, Eleanor Highwood and Andrew Charlton-Perez (Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L24706, doi:10.1029/2011GL049761, 2011), there is an error we would like to correct. [2] The model runs with limestone aerosol used an incorrect control case, which produced incorrect heating rate changes when compared with a ‘perturbed’ case which included limestone aerosol. We attach a corrected Figure 2, which shows stratospheric temperature change for the SMALL/WIDE distribution of each aerosol type. There is now no cooling in the polar lower stratosphere beneath the layer of limestone aerosol. The temperature change pattern for limestone is now very similar to that for titania, albeit of different magnitude. This renders paragraph 16, which refers to the cooling beneath the layer, superfluous. [3] This change slightly affects the calculation of the lower stratospheric pole-Equator temperature differences shown inFigure 3. We attach a corrected version of Figure 3. There is a slight reduction in the pole-Equator temperature differences in DJF. In JJA the SMALL/WIDE case now slightly reduces the pole-Equator temperature difference. However, the magnitude of these changes are small and do not affect our conclusions that (1) limestone aerosol produces a stratospheric temperature change pattern distinct to other aerosol types, (2) limestone aerosol increases the pole-Equator temperature difference (a proxy for the meridional temperature gradient) in DJF and (3) this pole-Equator temperature difference is extremely sensitive to size for wide size distributions.