Marc Chiacchio

Evaluation of the radiation budget with a regional climate model over Europe and inspection of dimming and brightening

Shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) components of the radiation budget at the surface and top of atmosphere (TOA) are evaluated in the regional climate model RegCM version 4 driven by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis over Europe. The simulated radiative components were evaluated with those from satellite-based products and reanalysis. At the surface the model overestimated the absorbed solar radiation but was compensated by a greater loss of thermal energy while both SW and LW TOA net fluxes were underestimated representing too little solar energy absorbed and too little outgoing thermal energy. Averaged biases in radiative parameters were generally within 25 W m−2, were dependent on differences by as much as 0.2 in cloud fraction, surface, and planetary albedo and less dependent on surface temperature associated with the surface longwave parameters, and are in line with other studies. Clear-sky fluxes showed better results when cloud cover differences had no influence. We also found a clear distinction between land versus water with smaller biases over land at the surface and over water at the TOA due to differences in cloud fraction and albedo. Finally, we inspected dimming and brightening for the period 1979–2010 with an indication for dimming early in the time series (i.e., 1979–1987) and brightening after, which agrees with surface-based observations. After 2000, however, a decrease in the brightening by more than 1 order of magnitude was evident which is in contrast to the continued brightening found in surface records and satellite-derived estimates.

Evaluation of Methods to Estimate the Surface Downwelling Longwave Flux during Arctic Winter

Abstract Surface longwave radiation fluxes dominate the energy budget of nighttime polar regions, yet little is known about the relative accuracy of existing satellite-based techniques to estimate this parameter. We compare eight methods to estimate the downwelling longwave radiation flux and to validate their performance with measurements from two field programs in the Arctic: the Coordinated Eastern Arctic Experiment (CEAREX) conducted in the Barents Sea during the autumn and winter of 1988, and the Lead Experiment performed in the Beaufort Sea in the spring of 1992. Five of the eight methods were developed for satellite-derived quantities, and three are simple parameterizations based on surface observations. All of the algorithms require information about cloud fraction, which is provided from the NASA–NOAA Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) polar pathfinder dataset (Path-P); some techniques ingest temperature and moisture profiles (also from Path-...

Tropical cyclone activity enhanced by Sahara greening and reduced dust emissions during the African Humid Period

Significance Our modeling study shows the crucial role of vegetation cover over the Sahara and reduced dust emission in altering tropical cyclone activity during the mid-Holocene (6,000 yBP). Our results also demonstrate how these regional changes in land cover and dust emission are able to affect areas far afield through changes of large-scale atmospheric circulation. Our study strongly suggests that an appropriate representation of land cover and dust emission is of paramount importance to be able to capture past—and potentially future—climate changes. Tropical cyclones (TCs) can have devastating socioeconomic impacts. Understanding the nature and causes of their variability is of paramount importance for society. However, historical records of TCs are too short to fully characterize such changes and paleo-sediment archives of Holocene TC activity are temporally and geographically sparse. Thus, it is of interest to apply physical modeling to understanding TC variability under different climate conditions. Here we investigate global TC activity during a warm climate state (mid-Holocene, 6,000 yBP) characterized by increased boreal summer insolation, a vegetated Sahara, and reduced dust emissions. We analyze a set of sensitivity experiments in which not only solar insolation changes are varied but also vegetation and dust concentrations. Our results show that the greening of the Sahara and reduced dust loadings lead to more favorable conditions for tropical cyclone development compared with the orbital forcing alone. In particular, the strengthening of the West African Monsoon induced by the Sahara greening triggers a change in atmospheric circulation that affects the entire tropics. Furthermore, whereas previous studies suggest lower TC activity despite stronger summer insolation and warmer sea surface temperature in the Northern Hemisphere, accounting for the Sahara greening and reduced dust concentrations leads instead to an increase of TC activity in both hemispheres, particularly over the Caribbean basin and East Coast of North America. Our study highlights the importance of regional changes in land cover and dust concentrations in affecting the potential intensity and genesis of past TCs and suggests that both factors may have appreciable influence on TC activity in a future warmer climate.

On the links between meteorological variables, aerosols, and tropical cyclone frequency in individual ocean basins

A generalized linear model based on Poisson regression has been used to assess the impact of environmental variables modulating tropical cyclone frequency in six main cyclone development areas: the East Pacific, West Pacific, North Atlantic, North Indian, South Indian, and South Pacific. The analysis covers the period 1980-2009 and focuses on widely used meteorological parameters including wind shear, sea surface temperature, and relative humidity from different reanalyses as well as aerosol optical depth for different compounds simulated by the GOCART model. Circulation indices are also included. Cyclone frequency is obtained from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship. A strong link is found between cyclone frequency and the relative sea surface temperature, Atlantic Meridional Mode, and wind shear with significant explained log-likelihoods in the North Atlantic of 37%, 27%, and 28%, respectively. A significant impact of black carbon and organic aerosols on cyclone frequency is found over the North Indian Ocean, with explained log-likelihoods of 27%. A weaker but still significant impact is found for observed dust aerosols in the North Atlantic with an explained log-likelihood of 11%. Changes in lower stratospheric temperatures explain 28% of the log-likelihood in the North Atlantic. Lower stratospheric temperatures from a subset of CMIP5 models properly simulate the warming and subsequent cooling of the lower stratosphere that follows a volcanic eruption but underestimate the cooling by about 0.5 °C.