William D. Collins

Radiative forcing by long‐lived greenhouse gases: Calculations with the AER radiative transfer models

A primary component of the observed, recent climate change is the radiative forcing from increased concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHGs). Effective simulation of anthropogenic climate change by general circulation models (GCMs) is strongly dependent on the accurate representation of radiative processes associated with water vapor, ozone and LLGHGs. In the context of the increasing application of the Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. (AER) radiation models within the GCM community, their capability to calculate longwave and shortwave radiative forcing for clear sky scenarios previously examined by the radiative transfer model intercomparison project (RTMIP) is presented. Forcing calculations with the AER line-by-line (LBL) models are very consistent with the RTMIP line-by-line results in the longwave and shortwave. The AER broadband models, in all but one case, calculate longwave forcings within a range of -0.20 to 0.23 W m{sup -2} of LBL calculations and shortwave forcings within a range of -0.16 to 0.38 W m{sup -2} of LBL results. These models also perform well at the surface, which RTMIP identified as a level at which GCM radiation models have particular difficulty reproducing LBL fluxes. Heating profile perturbations calculated by the broadband models generally reproduce high-resolution calculations within a few hundredths K d{sup -1} in the troposphere and within 0.15 K d{sup -1} in the peak stratospheric heating near 1 hPa. In most cases, the AER broadband models provide radiative forcing results that are in closer agreement with high 20 resolution calculations than the GCM radiation codes examined by RTMIP, which supports the application of the AER models to climate change research.

Effects of Black Carbon Aerosols on the Indian Monsoon

Abstract A six-member ensemble of twentieth-century simulations with changes to only time-evolving global distributions of black carbon aerosols in a global coupled climate model is analyzed to study the effects of black carbon (BC) aerosols on the Indian monsoon. The BC aerosols act to increase lower-tropospheric heating over South Asia and reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface during the dry season, as noted in previous studies. The increased meridional tropospheric temperature gradient in the premonsoon months of March–April–May (MAM), particularly between the elevated heat source of the Tibetan Plateau and areas to the south, contributes to enhanced precipitation over India in those months. With the onset of the monsoon, the reduced surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal, Arabian Sea, and over India that extend to the Himalayas act to reduce monsoon rainfall over India itself, with some small increases over the Tibetan Plateau. Precipitation over China generally decreases due to...

Simulating aerosols using a chemical transport model with assimilation of satellite aerosol retrievals: Methodology for INDOEX

A system for simulating aerosols has been developed using a chemical transport model together with an assimilation of satellite aerosol retrievals. The methodology and model components are described in this paper, and the modeled distribution of aerosols for the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) is presented by Rasch et al. [this issue]. The system generated aerosol forecasts to guide deployment of ships and aircraft during INDOEX. The system consists of the Model of Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry (MATCH) combined with an assimilation package developed for applications in atmospheric chemistry. MATCH predicts the evolution of sulfate, carbonaceous, and mineral dust aerosols, and it diagnoses the distribution of sea salt aerosols. The model includes a detailed treatment of the sources, chemical transformation, transport, and deposition of the aerosol species. The aerosol forecasts involve a two-stage process. During the assimilation phase the total column aerosol optical depth (AOD) is estimated from the model aerosol fields. The model state is then adjusted to improve the agreement between the simulated AOD and satellite retrievals of AOD. During the subsequent integration phase the aerosol fields are evolved using meteorological fields from an external model. Comparison of the modeled AOD against estimates of the AOD from INDOEX Sun photometer data show that the differences in daily means are -0.03 ± 0.06. Although the initial application is limited to the Indian Ocean, the methodology could be extended to derive global aerosol analyses combining in situ and remotely sensed aerosol observations. Copyright 2001 by the American Geophysical Union.

Impact of Desert Dust Radiative Forcing on Sahel Precipitation: Relative Importance of Dust Compared to Sea Surface Temperature Variations, Vegetation Changes, and Greenhouse Gas Warming

The role of direct radiative forcing of desert dust aerosol in the change from wet to dry climate observed in the African Sahel region in the last half of the twentieth century is investigated using simulations with an atmospheric general circulation model. The model simulations are conducted either forced by the observed sea surface temperature (SST) or coupled with the interactive SST using the Slab Ocean Model (SOM). The simulation model uses dust that is less absorbing in the solar wavelengths and has larger particle sizes than other simulation studies. As a result, simulations show less shortwave absorption within the atmosphere and larger longwave radiative forcing by dust. Simulations using SOM show reduced precipitation over the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) including the Sahel region and increased precipitation south of the ITCZ when dust radiative forcing is included. In SST-forced simulations, on the other hand, significant precipitation changes are restricted to over North Africa. These changes are considered to be due to the cooling of global tropical oceans as well as the cooling of the troposphere over North Africa in response to dust radiative forcing. The model simulation of dust cannot capture the magnitude of the observed increase of desert dust when allowing dust to respond to changes in simulated climate, even including changes in vegetation, similar to previous studies. If the model is forced to capture observed changes in desert dust, the direct radiative forcing by the increase of North African dust can explain up to 30% of the observed precipitation reduction in the Sahel between wet and dry periods. A large part of this effect comes through atmospheric forcing of dust, and dust forcing on the Atlantic Ocean SST appears to have a smaller impact. The changes in the North and South Atlantic SSTs may account for up to 50% of the Sahel precipitation reduction. Vegetation loss in the Sahel region may explain about 10% of the observed drying, but this effect is statistically insignificant because of the small number of years in the simulation. Greenhouse gas warming seems to have an impact to increase Sahel precipitation that is opposite to the observed change. Although the estimated values of impacts are likely to be model dependent, analyses suggest the importance of direct radiative forcing of dust and feedbacks in modulating Sahel precipitation.

Achieving Climate Change Absolute Accuracy in Orbit

The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission will provide a calibration laboratory in orbit for the purpose of accurately measuring and attributing climate change. CLARREO measurements establish new climate change benchmarks with high absolute radiometric accuracy and high statistical confidence across a wide range of essential climate variables. CLARREOs inherently high absolute accuracy will be verified and traceable on orbit to Systeme Internationale (SI) units. The benchmarks established by CLARREO will be critical for assessing changes in the Earth system and climate model predictive capabilities for decades into the future as society works to meet the challenge of optimizing strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change. The CLARREO benchmarks are derived from measurements of the Earths thermal infrared spectrum (5–50 μm), the spectrum of solar radiation reflected by the Earth and its atmosphere (320–2300 nm), and radio occultation refractivity from which...

Application of the CALIOP layer product to evaluate the vertical distribution of aerosols estimated by global models: AeroCom phase i results

[1] The CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) layer product is used for a multimodel evaluation of the vertical distribution of aerosols. Annual and seasonal aerosol extinction profiles are analyzed over 13 sub-continental regions representative of industrial, dust, and biomass burning pollution, from CALIOP 2007–2009 observations and from AeroCom (Aerosol Comparisons between Observations and Models) 2000 simulations. An extinction mean height diagnostic (Za) is defined to quantitatively assess the models’ performance. It is calculated over the 0–6 km and 0–10 km altitude ranges by weighting the altitude of each 100 m altitude layer by its aerosol extinction coefficient. The mean extinction profiles derived from CALIOP layer products provide consistent regional and seasonal specificities and a low inter-annual variability. While the outputs from most models are significantly correlated with the observed Za climatologies, some do better than others, and 2 of the 12 models perform particularly well in all seasons. Over industrial and maritime regions, most models show higher Za than observed by CALIOP, whereas over the African and Chinese dust source regions, Za is underestimated during Northern Hemisphere Spring and Summer. The positive model bias in Za is mainly due to an overestimate of the extinction above 6 km. Potential CALIOP and model limitations, and methodological factors that might contribute to the differences are discussed.

The effect of horizontal resolution on simulation quality in the Community Atmospheric Model, CAM5.1

We present an analysis of version 5.1 of the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM5.1) at a high horizontal resolution. Intercomparison of this global model at approximately 0.25°, 1°, and 2° is presented for extreme daily precipitation as well as for a suite of seasonal mean fields. In general, extreme precipitation amounts are larger in high resolution than in lower-resolution configurations. In many but not all locations and/or seasons, extreme daily precipitation rates in the high-resolution configuration are higher and more realistic. The high-resolution configuration produces tropical cyclones up to category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale and a comparison to observations reveals both realistic and unrealistic model behavior. In the absence of extensive model tuning at high resolution, simulation of many of the mean fields analyzed in this study is degraded compared to the tuned lower-resolution public released version of the model.

Simulation of aerosol distributions and radiative forcing for INDOEX: Regional climate impacts

The direct radiative forcing by aerosols over the Indian Ocean region is simulated for the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) Intensive Field Phase during Spring 1999. The forcing is calculated for the top-of-atmosphere (TOA), surface, and atmosphere by differencing shortwave fluxes computed with and without aerosols. The calculation includes the effects of sea-salt, sulfate, carbonaceous, and soil-dust aerosols. The aerosol distributions are obtained from a global aerosol simulation including assimilation of satellite retrievals of aerosol optical thickness (AOT). The time-dependent, three-dimensional aerosol distributions are derived with a chemical transport model driven with meteorological analyses for this period. The surface albedos are obtained from a land-surface model forced with an identical meteorological analysis and satellite-derived rainfall and insolation. These calculations are consistent with in situ observations of the surface insolation over the central Indian Ocean and with satellite measurements of the reflected shortwave radiation. The calculations show that the surface insolation under clear skies is reduced by as much as 40 W/m2 over the Indian subcontinent by natural and anthropogenic aerosols. This reduction in insolation is accompanied by an increase in shortwave flux absorbed in the atmosphere by 25 W/m2. The inclusion of clouds in the calculations changes the direct effect by less than 2 W/m2 over the Indian subcontinent, although the reduction is much larger over China. The magnitude of the difference between all-sky and clear-sky forcing is quite sensitive to the three-dimensional spatial relationship between the aerosol and cloud fields, and other estimates of the difference for the INDOEX Intensive Field Phase are as large as 5 W/m2.

An updated parameterization for infrared emission and absorption by water vapor in the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model

[1] An updated parameterization for the absorption and emission of infrared radiation by water vapor has been developed for the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The CAM is the latest version of the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM). This updated treatment preserves the formulation of the radiative transfer equations using the absorptivity/emissivity method. However, the components of the absorptivity and emissivity related to water vapor have been replaced with new terms calculated with the General Line-by-line Atmospheric Transmittance and Radiance Model (GENLN2). The mean absolute errors in the surface and top-of-atmosphere clear-sky longwave fluxes for standard atmospheres are reduced to less than 1 W/m 2 . Mean absolute differences between the cooling rates from the original method and GENLN2 are typically 0.2 K/d. These differences are reduced by at least a factor of 3 using the updated parameterization. The updated parameterization increases the longwave cooling at 300 mbar by 0.4 to 0.7 K/d, and it decreases the cooling near 800 mbar by 0.2 to 0.6 K/d. The increased cooling is caused by line absorption and the foreign continuum in the rotation band, and the decreased cooling is caused by the self-continuum in the rotation band. These changes in the vertical profile of longwave cooling interact strongly with the parameterization of convection. The effects on the fluxes, diabatic cooling rates, and climate state are illustrated using simulations with the new climate model. INDEX TERMS: 3337 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Numerical modeling and data assimilation; 3319 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: General circulation; 3359 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Radiative processes; KEYWORDS: radiative transfer, water vapor, continuum, GCM, longwave cooling

Atmospheric absorption during the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Enhanced Shortwave Experiment (ARESE)

The objectives of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Enhanced Shortwave Experiment (ARESE) are to directly measure clear and cloudy sky shortwave atmospheric absorption and to quantify any absorption found in excess of model predictions. We undertake detailed model comparisons to near-infrared and total solar flux time series observed by surface and airborne radiometric instruments during the ARESE campaign. Model clear-sky absorption biases generally fall within the range of uncertainty generated by sample size, and assumptions of aerosol properties and surface albedo. Direct measurements by stacked aircraft on the overcast day of October 30, 1995, confirm the detection of enhanced cloud shortwave absorption during ARESE. The detection is substantiated by, and consistent with, three independent measures of cloudy sky absorption estimated in previous studies: cloud forcing ratio, insolation forcing ratio, and albedo/transmission slope. A significant portion of the enhanced absorption occurs at visible wavelengths. Collocated measurements of liquid water path (LWP) suggest the magnitude of the enhanced absorption increases with LWP.