GEO-Ring observations reveal substantially overestimated global land aerosol cooling

GEO-Ring observations reveal substantially overestimated global land aerosol cooling | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Physical Sciences - Article GEO-Ring observations reveal substantially overestimated global land aerosol cooling Jing Wei, Yulong Fan, Zhanqing Li, Lin Sun, Yuan Wang, Hongbin Yu, and 12 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9556792/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract The direct aerosol radiative effect (DARE) remains one of the largest uncertainties in Earth’s climate system, partly because global estimates rely on polar-orbiting satellites with limited daily sampling. Here, we combine observations from eight geostationary satellites (the GEO-Ring constellation) with an integrated Transformer and transfer learning framework to retrieve global, hourly aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 550 nm and 2 km resolution over land. The resulting dataset agrees well with independent random-sample-based cross-validation (CV-R2 = 0.86; RMSE = 0.085) and enables robust characterization of diurnal AOD variability. We find pronounced diurnal cycles, with a mean amplitude of 46% ± 29% relative to a global mean land AOD of 0.17 ± 0.13 during 2021–2023, alongside strong regional contrasts. Instantaneous polar-orbiting observations yield systematically higher aerosol loadings by 7–48% across 60–80% of global land areas relative to GEO-Ring estimates, reflecting unresolved diurnal variability and retrieval differences. These discrepancies lead to a 35–79% overestimation of global annual mean DARE over land (−3.8 W m-2), implying an inflated estimate of aerosol-induced cooling and consequently a greater challenge for mitigating global warming. Our results highlight the importance of resolving diurnal aerosol variability for robust quantification of aerosol radiative effects and their climate impacts. Earth and environmental sciences/Planetary science Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental impact Physical sciences/Astronomy and planetary science/Planetary science Full Text Additional Declarations There is NO Competing Interest. Supplementary Files GlobalDARESupplementalMaterials.docx GEO-Ring observations reveal substantially overestimated global land aerosol cooling Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9556792","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Physical Sciences - Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":635599128,"identity":"ae0b2c38-dfed-442c-adea-461893c959af","order_by":0,"name":"Jing 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Here, we combine observations from eight geostationary satellites (the GEO-Ring constellation) with an integrated Transformer and transfer learning framework to retrieve global, hourly aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 550 nm and 2 km resolution over land. The resulting dataset agrees well with independent random-sample-based cross-validation (CV-R2 = 0.86; RMSE = 0.085) and enables robust characterization of diurnal AOD variability. We find pronounced diurnal cycles, with a mean amplitude of 46% ± 29% relative to a global mean land AOD of 0.17 ± 0.13 during 2021–2023, alongside strong regional contrasts. Instantaneous polar-orbiting observations yield systematically higher aerosol loadings by 7–48% across 60–80% of global land areas relative to GEO-Ring estimates, reflecting unresolved diurnal variability and retrieval differences. 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