Modeling of clouds and radiation for developing parameterizations for general circulation models. Annual report, 1995

We have used a hierarchy of numerical models for cirrus and stratus clouds and for radiative transfer to improve the reliability of general circulation models. Our detailed cloud microphysical model includes all of the physical processes believed to control the lifecycles of liquid and ice clouds in the troposphere. We have worked on specific GCM parameterizations for the radiative properties of cirrus clouds, making use of a mesocale model as the test-bed for the parameterizations. We have also modeled cirrus cloud properties with a detailed cloud physics model to better understand how the radiatively important properties of cirrus are controlled by their environment. We have used another cloud microphysics model to investigate of the interactions between aerosols and clouds. This work is some of the first to follow the details of interactions between aerosols and cloud droplets and has shown some unexpected relations between clouds and aerosols. We have also used line-by- line radiative transfer results verified with ARM data, to derive a GCMS