Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Publication Date
17 November 2023

Enhanced Cloud Top Longwave Radiative Cooling Due To the Effect of Horizontal Radiative Transfer in the Stratocumulus to Trade Cumulus Transition Regime

Authors

Author

Recent studies develop the SPeedy Algorithm for Radiative TrAnsfer through CloUd Sides (SPARTACUS) to handle the influence of horizontal RT on vertical radiative fluxes within an atmospheric column. The present study applies SPARTACUS to large eddy simulation (LES)-generated cloud fields across the stratocumulus to trade cumulus transition (STCT) regime with coarse and fine vertical resolutions. The results show that, as the vertical resolution increases, radiation simulations show increasingly stronger cloud-top longwave (LW) radiative cooling. Consequently, the sharp radiative heating gradient across the cloud layer in the LES-like resolution simulations cannot be resolved with the coarse resolution simulations. Including the horizontal RT typically enhances cloud LW radiative cooling rate by less than 10% for all the cloud fields but more significantly in the cloud fields during the STCT. The enhanced cloud LW radiative cooling also occurs in the lower cloud layer in the decoupled cumulus cloud regime.

Ren, Tong, Ping Yang, Xianglei Huang, Xiuhong Chen, and Zhaoyi Shen. 2023. “Enhanced Cloud Top Longwave Radiative Cooling Due To The Effect Of Horizontal Radiative Transfer In The Stratocumulus To Trade Cumulus Transition Regime”. Geophysical Research Letters 50. doi:10.1029/2023GL106076.
Funding Program Area(s)