This dataset presents results from experiments, in which the dependence of black carbon (BC) radiative forcing on emission location and season has been systematically evaluated with the NorESM1-Happi climate model. Also provided are GrADS scripts and fortran programs employed to generate the results in the manuscript (Räisänen et al. 2022, submitted to ACP) in which these data are used. A related resource (a fortran-based tool for estimating the BC global-mean radiative forcing and associated temperature response based on the region and annual or monthly BC emission rates given by the user) is provided at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6461647 (Räisänen 2022).

REFERENCE FOR THE MANUSCRIPT: Räisänen, P., Merikanto, J., Makkonen, R., Savolahti, M., Kirkevåg, A., Sand, M., Seland, Ø., and Partanen, A.-I.: Mapping the dependence of BC radiative forcing on emission location and season, Atmos. Chem. Phys., submitted, 2022

REFERENCE FOR THE TOOL AVAILABLE AT ZENODO: Räisänen, Petri: BC radiative forcing and climate response tool, version 1.0.0, Zenodo (code), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6461647, 2022.

NorESM1-Happi (Graff et al., https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-569-2019) was run at a horizontal resolution of ca. 1.9 x 2.5 deg (144 x 96 grid points) with 26 levels in the vertical. The model was run for years 2012-2017, and data is provided for 2013-2017. The experiments used prescribed sea surface temperature and sea ice. The model aerosol scheme was run in an offline mode, which means that the meteorological conditions are not influenced by the assumed aerosol emissions. This allowed for an essentially noise-free evaluation of the radiative forcing (RF) associated with changed BC emissions. To investigate how the BC RF depends on emission region and season, a very large number of experiments (960) was made, in which a fixed BC emission rate (1.E-12 kg m-2 s-1) was assumed separately for 192 regions (ca. 11.4 x 30 deg latitude-longitude boxes) and for five seasonal distributions of emissions. Evaluation of the methodology given in the manuscript showed that this approach works reasonably well for the BC direct RF and for the RF due to BC in snow, but not for the BC indirect effects on clouds. It should also be understood that NorESM1-Happi, like any climate model, is subject to model-specific biases that may influence the derived BC RF.

The contents of the data files are described in the file "README_data.txt". The contents of the file containing code "fortran_programs_and_GrADS_scripts.zip" are described in "README_code.txt" as well as in README files included in the zip file. The terms of use for the data and the code are given in the files "License_data.txt" and "License_code.txt", respectively.