Recent Advances in the Observation and Modeling of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions, Cloud Feedbacks, and Earth’s Energy Imbalance: A Review

This review focuses on improving the understanding of the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on cloud processes, precipitation, radiation, climate, associated feedback mechanisms, and Earth's energy imbalance (EEI), with a particular emphasis on literature published after the IPCC AR6. EarthCARE, an epoch-making satellite mission, has just been launched in 2024. Global climate models (GCMs) have become sophisticated, particularly with respect to the treatment of precipitation, and novel GCMs have been developed for the upcoming Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). Satellite simulators have been used to incorporate new diagnostics to facilitate an apples-to-apples comparison between the models and observations established in the recent studies. To reduce the key uncertainties at fundamental process levels, we focus on: (1) assessing model-observation discrepancies, (2) improving the existing models, and (3) examining the linkage between effective radiative forcing, cloud feedback, and the recent EEI trends.