Photomolecular Effect as A Potential Explanation for The Cloud Absorption Anomaly

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the photomolecular effect at water-air interfaces, involving direct water molecule cleavage by light, could explain the longstanding cloud absorption anomaly in climate models, suggesting a missing physics component.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of the photomolecular effect as a new physical mechanism potentially explaining cloud absorption anomalies, extending existing theories with simulation-based evidence.

Findings

Including the photomolecular effect can potentially explain the cloud absorption anomaly.

Simulation results suggest a significant impact of the effect at water-air interfaces.

Further research is needed due to current limitations in parameter accuracy.

Abstract

Cloud absorption is acknowledged as the biggest source of uncertainty in the climate models. For over 70 years, many experiments have reported clouds absorbing more solar radiation than theory could predict. In the visible spectrum, simulations based on optical constants of water lead to negligible cloud absorption. This result had been explored by some experimentalists to calibrate the cloud absorption measurements. However, the author and his collaborators recently discovered that visible light can directly cleave off water molecular clusters at liquid-air interfaces (PNAS, e2312751120, 2023; e2320844121, 2024), which is named the photomolecular effect in analogy to the photoelectric effect. This discovery suggests that a crucial piece of physics has been missing in the existing theories: light can be absorbed at water-air interface. The photomolecular effect can be simulated by generalizing the boundary conditions for the Maxwell equations using Feibelman parameters that were derived in the past research on the surface photoelectric effect and surface plasmons. In this work, the author uses simulation to show that including the photomolecular effect at the air-water interface can potentially explain the cloud absorption anomaly. Although the lack of accurate Feibelman parameter values prevents a direct comparison of the current theory with experiments, this work points to an unexplored mechanism for explaining the cloud absorption anomaly and calls for further investigation on the impacts of photomolecular effect in the climate modeling.