Ulrika Willén

Cloudnet: Continuous Evaluation of Cloud Profiles in Seven Operational Models Using Ground-Based Observations

Cloud fraction, liquid and ice water contents derived from long-term radar, lidar and microwave radiometer data are systematically compared to models to quantify and improve their performance.

The Rossby Centre Regional Atmospheric Climate Model Part I: Model Climatology and Performance for the Present Climate over Europe

The Rossby Centre Atmospheric Regional Climate Model (RCA2) is described and simulation results, for the present climate over Europe, are evaluated against available observations. Systematic biases in the models mean climate and climate variability are documented and key parameterization weaknesses identified. The quality of near-surface parameters is investigated in some detail, particularly temperature, precipitation, the surface energy budget and cloud cover. The model simulates the recent, observed climate and variability with a high degree of realism. Compensating errors in the components of the surface radiation budget are highlighted and the fundamental causes of these biases are traced to the relevant aspects of the cloud, precipitation and radiation parameterizations. The model has a tendency to precipitate too frequently at small rates, this has a direct impact on the simulation of cloud-radiation interaction and surface temperatures. Great care must be taken in the use of observations to evaluate high resolution RCMs, when they are forced by analyzed boundary conditions. This is particularly true with respect to precipitation and cloudiness, where observational uncertainty is often larger than the RCM bias.

The Rossby Centre Regional Atmospheric Climate Model Part II: Application to the Arctic Climate

The Rossby Centre regional climate model (RCA2) has been integrated over the Arctic Ocean as part of the international ARCMIP project. Results have been compared to observations derived from the SHEBA data set. The standard RCA2 model overpredicts cloud cover and downwelling longwave radiation, during the Arctic winter. This error was improved by introducing a new cloud parameterization, which significantly improves the annual cycle of cloud cover. Compensating biases between clear sky downwelling longwave radiation and longwave radiation emitted from cloud base were identified. Modifications have been introduced to the model radiation scheme that more accurately treat solar radiation interaction with ice crystals. This leads to a more realistic representation of cloud-solar radiation interaction. The clear sky portion of the model radiation code transmits too much solar radiation through the atmosphere, producing a positive bias at the top of the frequent boundary layer clouds. A realistic treatment of the temporally evolving albedo, of both sea-ice and snow, appears crucial for an accurate simulation of the net surface energy budget. Likewise, inclusion of a prognostic snow-surface temperature seems necessary, to accurately simulate near-surface thermodynamic processes in the Arctic.

Evaluation of the atmospheric water vapor content in a regional climate model using ground-based GPS measurements

Ground-based GPS measurements can provide independent data for the assessment of climate models. We use the atmospheric integrated water vapor (IWV) obtained from GPS measurements at 99 European sites to evaluate the regional Rossby Centre Atmospheric climate model (RCA) driven at the boundaries by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data (ERA Interim). The GPS data were compared to the RCA simulation and the ERA Interim data. The comparison was first made using the monthly mean values. Averaged over the domain and the 14 years covered by the GPS data, IWV differences of about 0.47 kg/m^2 and 0.39 kg/m^2 are obtained for RCA-GPS and ECMWF-GPS, respectively. The RCA-GPS standard deviation is 0.98 kg/m^2 whereas it is 0.35 kg/m^2 for the ECMWF-GPS comparison. The IWV differences for RCA are positively correlated to the differences for ECMWF. However, this is not the case for two sites in Italy where a wet bias is seen for ECMWF, while a dry bias is seen for RCA, the latter being consistent with a cold temperature bias found for RCA in that region by other authors. Comparisons of the estimated diurnal cycle and the spatial structure function of the IWV were made between the GPS data and the RCA simulation. The RCA captures the geographical variation of the diurnal peak in the summer. Averaged over all sites, a peak at 17 local solar time is obtained from the GPS data while it appears later, at 18, in the RCA simulation. The spatial variation of the IWV obtained for an RCA run with a resolution of 11 km gives a better agreement with the GPS results than does the spatial variation from a 50 km resolution run.

Projected precipitation changes in South America: a dynamical downscaling within CLARIS

Responses of precipitation seasonal means and extremes over South America in a downscaling of a Climate change scenario are assessed with the Rossby Centre Regional Atmospheric Model (RCA). The anthropogenic warming under A1B scenario influences more on the likelihood of occurrence of severe extreme events like heavy precipitation and dry spells than on the mean seasonal precipitation. The risk of extreme precipitation increases in the La Plata Basin with a factor of 1.5-2.5 during all seasons and in the northwestern part of the continent with a factor 1.5-3 in summer, while it decreases in central and northeastern Brazil during winter and spring. The maximum amount of 5-days precipitation increases by up to 50% in La Plata Basin, indicating risks of flooding. Over central Brazil and the Bolivian lowland, where present 5-days precipitation is higher, the increases are similar in magnitude and could cause less impacts. In southern Amazonia, northeastern Brazil and the Amazon basin, the maximum number of consecutive dry days increases and mean winter and spring precipitation decreases, indicating a longer dry season. In the La Plata Basin, there is no clear pattern of change for the dry spell duration.

The Cloudlcci simulator for the ESA Cloudlcci climate data recordand its application to a global and a regional climate model

The Cloud Climate Change Initiative (Cloud_cci) satellite simulator has been developed to enable comparisons between the Cloud_cci Climate Data Record (CDR) and climate models. The Cloud_cci simulator is applied here to the EC-Earth Global Climate Model as well as the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model (RACMO) Regional Climate Model. We demonstrate the importance of using a satellite simulator that emulates the retrieval process underlying the Climate Data Record (CDR) as op5 posed to taking the model output directly. The impact of not sampling the model at the local overpass time of the polar-orbiting satellites used to make the dataset was shown to be large, yielding up to 100 % error in Liquid Water Path (LWP) simulations in certain regions. The simulator removes all clouds with optical thickness smaller than 0.2 to emulate the Cloud_cci CDR’s lack of sensitivity to very thin clouds. This reduces Total Cloud Fraction (TCF) globally by about 10 % for EC-Earth and by a few percent for RACMO over Europe. Globally, compared to the Cloud_cci CDR, EC-Earth is shown to be mostly in agreement 10 on the distribution of clouds and their height, but it generally underestimates the high cloud fraction associated with tropical convection regions, and overestimates the occurrence and height of clouds over the Sahara and the Arabian sub-continent. In RACMO, TCF is higher than retrieved over the northern Atlantic Ocean, but lower than retrieved over the European continent, where in addition the Cloud Top Pressure (CTP) is underestimated. The results shown here demonstrate again that a simulator is needed to make meaningful comparisons between modeled and retrieved cloud properties. It is promising to see that for 15 (nearly) all cloud properties the simulator improves the agreement of the model with the satellite data.

Comparing ERA-Interim clouds with satellite observations using a simplified satellite simulator

An evaluation of the ERA-Interim clouds using satellite observations is presented. To facilitate such an evaluation in a proper way, a simplified satellite simulator has been developed and applied to six-hourly ERA-Interim reanalysis data covering the period 1982 to 2014. The simulator converts modelled cloud fields, for example those of the ERA-Interim reanalysis, to simulated cloud fields by accounting for specific characteristics of passive imaging satellite sensors such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), which form the basis of many long-term observational datasets of cloud properties. It 5 is attempted to keep the simulated cloud fields close to the original modelled cloud fields to allow a quality assessment of the latter based on comparisons of the simulated clouds fields with the observations. Applying the simulator to ERA-Interim data, this study firstly focuses on spatial distribution and frequency of clouds (total cloud fraction) and on their vertical position, using cloud top pressure to express the cloud fraction of high, mid-level and low clouds. Furthermore, the cloud-top thermodynamic phase is investigated. All comparisons incorporate knowledge of systematic 10 uncertainties in the satellite observations and are further stratified by accounting for the limited sensitivity of the observations to clouds with very low cloud optical thickness (COT). The comparisons show that ERA-Interim has generally too low cloud fraction nearly everywhere on the globe except in the polar regions. This underestimation is caused by a lack of mid-level and/or low clouds for which the comparisons only show a minor sensitivity to cloud optical thickness thresholds applied. The amount of ERA-Interim high clouds, being higher than in 15 the observations, agrees to the observations within their estimated uncertainties. Removing the optically very thin clouds (COT < 0.15) from the model fields improves the agreement to the observations for high cloud fraction locally (e.g. in the Tropics) while for the mid-latitude regions best agreement of high cloud fraction is found when removing all clouds with COT < 1.0. Comparisons of the cloud thermodynamic phase at the cloud top reveals a too high relative ice cloud frequency in ERA-Interim being most pronounced in the higher latitudes. Indications are found that this is due to the suppression of liquid cloud existence 20 for temperatures below -23◦C in ERA-Interim. The application of this simulator facilitates a more effective use of passive satellite observations of clouds in the evaluation of modelled cloudiness, for example in reanalyses. 1 Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2018-258 Manuscript under review for journal Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discussion started: 30 May 2018 c