Wright, Jonathon S.
[Author];
Sun, Xiaoyi
[Author];
Konopka, Paul
[Author];
Krüger, Kirstin
[Author];
Legras, Bernard
[Author];
Molod, Andrea M.
[Author];
Tegtmeier, Susann
[Author];
Zhang, Guang J.
[Author];
Zhao, Xin
[Author]
Differences in tropical high clouds among reanalyses: origins and radiative impacts
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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Differences in tropical high clouds among reanalyses: origins and radiative impacts
Contributor:
Wright, Jonathon S.
[Author];
Sun, Xiaoyi
[Author];
Konopka, Paul
[Author];
Krüger, Kirstin
[Author];
Legras, Bernard
[Author];
Molod, Andrea M.
[Author];
Tegtmeier, Susann
[Author];
Zhang, Guang J.
[Author];
Zhao, Xin
[Author]
imprint:
EGU, 2020
Published in:Atmospheric chemistry and physics 20(14), 8989 - 9030 (2020). doi:10.5194/acp-20-8989-2020
Language:
English
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-8989-2020
ISSN:
1680-7316;
1680-7324
Origination:
Footnote:
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Description:
We examine differences among reanalysis high-cloud products in the tropics, assess the impacts of these differences on radiation budgets at the top of the atmosphere and within the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS), and discuss their possible origins in the context of the reanalysis models. We focus on the ERA5 (fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts – ECMWF – reanalysis), ERA-Interim (ECMWF Interim Reanalysis), JRA-55 (Japanese 55-year Reanalysis), MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2), and CFSR/CFSv2 (Climate Forecast System Reanalysis/Climate Forecast System Version 2) reanalyses. As a general rule, JRA-55 produces the smallest tropical high-cloud fractions and cloud water contents among the reanalyses, while MERRA-2 produces the largest. Accordingly, long-wave cloud radiative effects are relatively weak in JRA-55 and relatively strong in MERRA-2. Only MERRA-2 and ERA5 among the reanalyses produce tropical-mean values of outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) close to those observed, but ERA5 tends to underestimate cloud effects, while MERRA-2 tends to overestimate variability. ERA5 also produces distributions of long-wave, short-wave, and total cloud radiative effects at the top of the atmosphere that are very consistent with those observed. The other reanalyses all exhibit substantial biases in at least one of these metrics, although compensation between the long-wave and short-wave effects helps to constrain biases in the total cloud radiative effect for most reanalyses. The vertical distribution of cloud water content emerges as a key difference between ERA-Interim and other reanalyses. Whereas ERA-Interim shows a monotonic decrease of cloud water content with increasing height, the other reanalyses all produce distinct anvil layers. The latter is in better agreement with observations and yields very different profiles of radiative heating in the UTLS. For example, whereas the altitude of the level of zero net ...