The Radiative Feedback During the ENSO Cycle: Observations Versus Models

Observational and model data are used to study the radiative feedbacks during the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. We extend the previous works by analyzing the feedbacks with respect to not only top‐of‐atmosphere (TOA) but also the surface and atmospheric radiation budgets, using a newly developed set of radiation kernels. We find that the tropical radiative budgets undergo distinctive variations during ENSO. The radiative perturbation is especially significant for the atmospheric energy budget. We find that the cloud feedback during the developing phase of ENSO heats the atmosphere over the west and central Pacific differentially, which acts to strengthen the development. We also find that a prominent cloud feedback bias persists in the newer version global climate models. This bias results from wrong extent of compensation between longwave and shortwave effects, which points to the importance of validating the radiative sensitivity of clouds in the general circulation models.