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Atmosphere
Special Issues
Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect
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Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2018) | Viewed by 15988

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Andreas Macke

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany
Interests: light scattering; atmospheric particles; 3D radiative transfer; cloud radiative forcing; cloud remote sensing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Clouds largely modify the radiation budget, both in the solar and thermal spectral ranges, and thus play a fundamental role in the Earth’s climate state and adjustment to climate forcing. To this end, it is essential to understand the cloud radiative processes and forcing or effects. This Special Issue invites original new contributions on cloud radiative transfer modeling and observations, especially on the role of cloud heterogeneity cloud microphysics variability, and cloud–aerosol interactions.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Macke
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • light scattering at atmospheric particles
  • 3D radiative transfer
  • cloud radiative forcing
  • aerosol-cloud interaction

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 3221 KiB  
Article
An Investigation of Optically Very Thin Ice Clouds from Ground-Based ARM Raman Lidars
by Kelly A. Balmes and Qiang Fu
Atmosphere 2018, 9(11), 445; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9110445 - 14 Nov 2018
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3405
Abstract
Optically very thin ice clouds from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) and ground-based Raman lidars (RL) at the atmospheric radiation measurement (ARM) sites of the Southern Great Plains (SGP) and Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) are analyzed. The optically very [...] Read more.
Optically very thin ice clouds from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) and ground-based Raman lidars (RL) at the atmospheric radiation measurement (ARM) sites of the Southern Great Plains (SGP) and Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) are analyzed. The optically very thin ice clouds, with ice cloud column optical depths below 0.01, are about 23% of the transparent ice-cloudy profiles from the RL, compared to 4–7% from CALIPSO. The majority (66–76%) of optically very thin ice clouds from the RLs are found to be adjacent to ice clouds with ice cloud column optical depths greater than 0.01. The temporal structure of RL-observed optically very thin ice clouds indicates a clear sky–cloud continuum. Global cloudiness estimates from CALIPSO observations leveraged with high-sensitivity RL observations suggest that CALIPSO may underestimate the global cloud fraction when considering optically very thin ice clouds. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect)
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13 pages, 2116 KiB  
Article
The Impact of Cloud Radiative Effects on the Tropical Tropopause Layer Temperatures
by Qiang Fu, Maxwell Smith and Qiong Yang
Atmosphere 2018, 9(10), 377; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9100377 - 28 Sep 2018
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 4313
Abstract
A single-column radiative-convective model (RCM) is a useful tool to investigate the physical processes that determine the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) temperature structures. Previous studies on the TTL using the RCMs, however, omitted the cloud radiative effects. In this study, we examine the [...] Read more.
A single-column radiative-convective model (RCM) is a useful tool to investigate the physical processes that determine the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) temperature structures. Previous studies on the TTL using the RCMs, however, omitted the cloud radiative effects. In this study, we examine the impact of cloud radiative effects on the simulated TTL temperatures using an RCM. We derive the cloud radiative effects based on satellite observations, which show heating rates in the troposphere but cooling rates in the stratosphere. We find that the cloud radiative effect warms the TTL by as much as 2 K but cools the lower stratosphere by as much as −1.5 K, resulting in a thicker TTL. With (without) considering cloud radiative effects, we obtain a convection top of ≈167 hPa (≈150 hPa) with a temperature of ≈213 K (≈209 K), and a cold point at ≈87 hPa (≈94 hPa) with a temperature of ≈204 K (≈204 K). Therefore, the cloud radiative effects widen the TTL by both lowering the convection-top height and enhancing the cold-point height. We also examine the impact of TTL cirrus radiative effects on the RCM-simulated temperatures. We find that the TTL cirrus warms the TTL with a maximum temperature increase of ≈1.3 K near 110 hPa. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect)
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16 pages, 2971 KiB  
Article
Top-of-Atmosphere Shortwave Anisotropy over Liquid Clouds: Sensitivity to Clouds’ Microphysical Structure and Cloud-Topped Moisture
by Florian Tornow, René Preusker, Carlos Domenech, Cintia K. Carbajal Henken, Sören Testorp and Jürgen Fischer
Atmosphere 2018, 9(7), 256; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9070256 - 10 Jul 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3389
Abstract
We investigated whether Top-of-Atmosphere Shortwave (TOA SW) anisotropy—essential to convert satellite-based instantaneous TOA SW radiance measurements into TOA SW fluxes—is sensitive to cloud-top effective radii and cloud-topped water vapor. Using several years of CERES SSF Edition 4 data—filtered for overcast, horizontally homogeneous, low-level [...] Read more.
We investigated whether Top-of-Atmosphere Shortwave (TOA SW) anisotropy—essential to convert satellite-based instantaneous TOA SW radiance measurements into TOA SW fluxes—is sensitive to cloud-top effective radii and cloud-topped water vapor. Using several years of CERES SSF Edition 4 data—filtered for overcast, horizontally homogeneous, low-level and single-layer clouds of cloud optical thickness 10—as well as broadband radiative transfer simulations, we built refined empirical Angular Distribution Models (ADMs). The ADMs showed that anisotropy fluctuated particularly around the cloud bow and cloud glory (up to 2.9–8.0%) for various effective radii and at highest and lowest viewing zenith angles under varying amounts of cloud-topped moisture (up to 1.3–6.4%). As a result, flux estimates from refined ADMs differed from CERES estimates by up to 20 W m−2 at particular combinations of viewing and illumination geometry. Applied to CERES cross-track observation of January and July 2007—utilized to generate global radiation budget climatologies for benchmark comparisons with global climate models—we found that such differences between refined and CERES ADMs introduced large-scale biases of 1–2 W m−2 and on regional levels of up to 10 W m−2. Such biases could be attributed in part to low cloud-top effective radii (about 8 μm) and low cloud-topped water vapor (1.7 kg m−2) and in part to an inopportune correlation of viewing and illumination conditions with temporally varying effective radii and cloud-topped moisture, which failed to compensate towards vanishing flux bias. This work may help avoid sampling biases due to discrepancies between individual samples and the median cloud-top effective radii and cloud-top moisture conditions represented in current ADMs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect)
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20 pages, 9466 KiB  
Article
Cloud Longwave Scattering Effect and Its Impact on Climate Simulation
by Wenjie Zhao, Yiran Peng, Bin Wang and Jiangnan Li
Atmosphere 2018, 9(4), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos9040153 - 18 Apr 2018
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4469
Abstract
The cloud longwave (LW) scattering effect has been ignored in most current climate models. To investigate its climate impact, we apply an eight-stream DIScrete Ordinates Radiative Transfer (DISORT) scheme to include the cloud LW scattering in the General circulation model version of the [...] Read more.
The cloud longwave (LW) scattering effect has been ignored in most current climate models. To investigate its climate impact, we apply an eight-stream DIScrete Ordinates Radiative Transfer (DISORT) scheme to include the cloud LW scattering in the General circulation model version of the LongWave Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTMG_LW) and the Community Atmospheric Model Version 5 (CAM5). Results from the standalone RRTMG_LW and from diagnostic runs of CAM5 (no climate feedback) show that the cloud LW scattering reduces the upward flux at the top of the atmosphere and leads to an extra warming effect in the atmosphere. In the interactive runs with climate feedback included in CAM5, the cloud LW scattering effect is amplified by the water vapor-temperature feedback in a warmer atmosphere and has substantial influences on cloud fraction and specific humidity. The thermodynamic feedbacks are more significant in the northern hemisphere and the resulting meridional temperature gradient is different between the two hemispheres, which strengthens the southern branch of Hadley circulation, and modulates the westerly jet near 50° S and the upper part of Walker circulation. Our study concludes that the cloud LW scattering effect could have complex impacts on the global energy budget and shall be properly treated in future climate models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Radiative Processes and Effect)
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