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Radiative effects of polar stratospheric clouds
Author(s) -
Kinne S.,
Toon O. B.
Publication year - 1990
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/gl017i004p00373
Subject(s) - cirrus , atmospheric sciences , tropopause , radiative transfer , polar , environmental science , radiative cooling , ice cloud , stratosphere , climatology , geology , meteorology , physics , optics , astronomy
Radiative transfer calculations are performed for polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) using newly acquired PSC properties and polar atmospheric data. PSC radiative effects depend strongly on upwelling thermal radiation and vary from infrared heating over warm polar surfaces, such as oceans, to cooling over cold surfaces, such as the Antarctic plateau. Heating and cooling rates of nitric acid PSCs are smaller than ±0.1K/day. Rates for optically thicker ice PSCs vary from 1.0 to −0.2K/day, those for orographically forced ice PSCs even from 3.0 to −0.5K/day. Frequently observed optically thick cirrus decks near the tropopause provide a very cold radiative surface. These clouds not oily act to prevent heating and enhance cooling in ice PSCs to −0.5K/day and orographic ice PSCs to‐day, but such cirrus cloud decks also cool the entire stratosphere by up to −0.5K/day over warm surfaces, even in the absence of PSCs.