Authors: ZengZhen Hu Bohua Huang YuTai Hou Wanqiu Wang Fanglin Yang Cristiana Stan Edwin K Schneider
Publish Date: 2010/04/01
Volume: 36, Issue: 9-10, Pages: 1795-1811
Abstract
In this work we examine the sensitivity of tropical mean climate and seasonal cycle to low clouds and cloud liquid water path CLWP by prescribing them in the NCEP climate forecast system CFS It is found that the change of low cloud cover alone has a minor influence on the amount of net shortwave radiation reaching the surface and on the warm biases in the southeastern Atlantic In experiments where CLWP is prescribed using observations the mean climate in the tropics is improved significantly implying that shortwave radiation absorption by CLWP is mainly responsible for reducing the excessive surface net shortwave radiation over the southern oceans in the CFS Corresponding to large CLWP values in the southeastern oceans the model generates large low cloud amounts That results in a reduction of net shortwave radiation at the ocean surface and the warm biases in the sea surface temperature in the southeastern oceans Meanwhile the cold tongue and associated surface wind stress in the eastern oceans become stronger and more realistic As a consequence of the overall improvement of the tropical mean climate the seasonal cycle in the tropical Atlantic is also improved Based on the results from these sensitivity experiments we propose a model Bias Correction approach in which CLWP is prescribed only in the southeastern Atlantic by using observed annual mean climatology of CLWP It is shown that the warm biases in the southeastern Atlantic are largely eliminated and the seasonal cycle in the tropical Atlantic Ocean is significantly improved Prescribing CLWP in the CFS is then an effective interim technique to reduce model biases and to improve the simulation of seasonal cycle in the tropicsIn the process of designing and conducting the experiments we received help from Sarah Lu EMC/NCEP/NOAA Dagang Wang Princeton University Kathy Pegion COLA and ESRL/NOAA Meizhu Fan COLA GMU and NOAA Li Zhang COLA and NOAA Larry Marx COLA and Julia Manganello COLAWe also appreciate J L Kinter III for his comments and encouragement and V Krishnamurthy B Cash and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions This work was supported by the NOAA CVP Program NA07OAR4310310 Hu and Huang NSF ATM0830062 Huang and Schneider NSF ATM0830068 NOAA NA09OAR4310058 and NASA NNX09AN50G Hu and Stan Most of the calculation was conducted on the NCAR Bluefire supercomputer
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