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Abstract:
Black carbon (BC) plays an important role in the climate system due to its strong
warming effect, yet the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain due to the complex mixing
state of aerosols. Here we build a unified theoretical framework to describe BC’s mixing states,
linking dynamic processes to BC coating thickness distribution, and show its self-similarity for
sites in diverse environments. The size distribution of BC-containing particles is found to follow
an exponential pattern and is independent of BC core size. A mixing state module is established
based on this finding and successfully applied in global and regional models, which increases the
accuracy of aerosol climate effect estimations. Our theoretical framework can bridge the gap be-
tween observation and model simulation in both mixing state description and light absorption quantification
