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Balanced Cloud Radiative Effects Across a Range of Dynamical Conditions Over the Tropical West Pacific
Author(s) -
Wall Casey J.,
Hartmann Dennis L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2018gl080046
Subject(s) - radiative transfer , environmental science , atmosphere (unit) , atmospheric sciences , cirrus , convection , climatology , earth's energy budget , cloud height , range (aeronautics) , cloud cover , cloud computing , geology , meteorology , physics , radiation , materials science , quantum mechanics , computer science , composite material , operating system
Instantaneous relationships between clouds and large‐scale vertical motion are used to study the impact of circulation on the near cancellation of cloud radiative effects that is observed over the tropical west Pacific Ocean. The coverage of deep‐convective clouds increases with stronger upward motion, but the proportion of thick, medium, and thin anvil cloud remains nearly constant. Thus, when averaging over scales larger than individual storms, the top‐of‐atmosphere net radiation is only weakly sensitive to the large‐scale flow. The balance in cloud radiative effects is therefore maintained across a wide range of large‐scale circulations. The ability of the Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 to reproduce the observed cloud‐circulation relationships is investigated. The simulated convective clouds substantially overestimate the proportion of deep and optically thick cloud and underestimate the proportion of anvil cirrus. These results demonstrate that simulating key properties of deep‐convective clouds remains challenging for some state‐of‐the‐art climate models.