Total surface shortwave flux distributions 1901-2017 in support of carbon cycle modelling: No stratospheric aerosols

This dataset offers 6-hourly distributions of the total downward shortwave flux over the period 1901-2017. Radiative transfer calculations are based on monthly-averaged distributions of tropospheric aerosol optical depth, and 6-hourly distributions of cloud fraction. Methods follow those described in the Methods section of Mercado et al. (doi:10.1038/nature07949, 2009), but with updated input datasets. This version of the dataset excludes the radiative effects of stratospheric aerosols. The time series of speciated tropospheric aerosol optical depth is taken from the historical and RCP8.5 simulations by the HadGEM2-ES climate model (Bellouin et al., doi:10.1029/2011JD016074, 2011). To correct for biases in HadGEM2-ES, tropospheric aerosol optical depths are scaled over the whole period to match the global and monthly averages obtained over the period 2003-2017 by the CAMS Reanalysis of atmospheric composition (Inness et al., doi:10.5194/acp-19-3515-2019, 2019), which assimilates satellite retrievals of aerosol optical depth. The time series of cloud fraction is obtained by scaling the 6-hourly distributions simulated in the Japanese Reanalysis (JRA; Kobayashi et al., doi:10.2151/jmsj.2015-001, 2015) to match the monthly-averaged cloud cover in the CRU TS v4.03 dataset (Harris et al. doi:10.1038/s41597-020-0453-3, 2020). Surface radiative fluxes account for aerosol-radiation interactions from both tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols, and for aerosol-cloud interactions from tropospheric aerosols, except mineral dust. Tropospheric aerosols are also assumed to exert interactions with cloud. The radiative effects of those aerosol-cloud interactions are assumed to scale with the radiative effects of aerosol-radiation interactions of tropospheric aerosols, using regional scaling factors derived from HadGEM2-ES. Atmospheric constituent other than aerosols and clouds are set to a constant standard mid-latitude summer atmosphere.