scholarly journals Machine Learning Emulation of 3D Cloud Radiative Effects

Author(s):  
David Meyer ◽  
Robin J. Hogan ◽  
Peter D. Dueben ◽  
Shannon L. Mason

<p>The treatment of cloud structure in radiation schemes used in operational numerical weather prediction and climate models is often greatly simplified to make them computationally affordable. Here, we propose to correct the current operational scheme ecRad – as used for operational predictions at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts – for 3D cloud radiative effects using computationally cheap neural networks. The 3D cloud radiative effects are learned as the difference between ecRad’s fast Tripleclouds solver that neglects 3D cloud radiative effects, and its SPeedy Algorithm for Radiative TrAnsfer through CloUd Sides (SPARTACUS) solver that includes them but increases the cost of the entire radiation scheme. We find that the emulator increases the overall accuracy for both longwave and shortwave with a negligible impact on the model’s runtime performance.</p>

2021 ◽  
pp. 068
Author(s):  
Ján Mašek

Cet article résume les activités de Jean-François Geleyn qui ont abouti à un schéma de rayonnement de pointe adapté à la prévision numérique du temps. L'objectif principal - traiter les interactions nuage-rayonnement - a été atteint grâce à une amélioration considérable de l'approche à bandes larges (la vision avec deux seuls intervalles spectraux, l'un pour les courtes longueurs d'onde pour le rayonnement solaire, l'autre pour les grandes longueurs d'onde pour le rayonnement thermique), en ouvrant la voie à un appel intermittent du schéma dans le temps. Le schéma qui en résulte offre une alternative compétitive par rapport aux approches traditionnelles en « k-distribution corrélée » utilisant des méthodes plus précises mais plus coûteuses, méthodes qui ne permettent pas la mise à jour en temps réel des effets radiatifs des nuages. The paper summarizes the activities of Jean-François Geleyn leading to a state-of-the-art radiation scheme tailored for numerical weather prediction. The main goal - dealing with cloud-radiation interactions - was reached thanks to significant improvements to the broadband approach allowing for single shortwave and single longwave intervals, opening a way to selective intermittency. The resulting scheme offers an alternative competitive to the mainstream approach that uses very accurate but expensive correlated k-distribution method, not allowing for timely update of cloud radiative effects.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 4787-4812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Wild ◽  
Maria Z. Hakuba ◽  
Doris Folini ◽  
Patricia Dörig-Ott ◽  
Christoph Schär ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ploeger ◽  
Mohamadou Diallo ◽  
Edward Charlesworth ◽  
Paul Konopka ◽  
Bernard Legras ◽  
...  

Abstract. This paper investigates the global stratospheric Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC) in the ERA5 meteorological reanalysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The analysis is based on simulations of stratospheric mean age of air, including the full age spectrum, with the Lagrangian transport model CLaMS, driven by winds and total diabatic heating rates from the reanalysis. ERA5-based results are compared to those of the preceding ERA–Interim reanalysis. Our results show a significantly slower BDC for ERA5 than for ERA–Interim, manifesting in weaker diabatic heating rates and larger age of air. In the tropical lower stratosphere, heating rates are 30–40 % weaker in ERA5, likely correcting a known bias in ERA–Interim. Above, ERA5 age of air appears slightly high-biased and the BDC slightly slow compared to tracer observations. The age trend in ERA5 over 1989–2018 is negative throughout the stratosphere, as climate models predict in response to global warming. However, the age decrease is not linear over the period but exhibits steplike changes which could be caused by muti-annual variability or changes in the assimilation system. Over the 2002–2012 period, ERA5 age shows a similar hemispheric dipole trend pattern as ERA–Interim, with age increasing in the NH and decreasing in the SH. Shifts in the age spectrum peak and residual circulation transit times indicate that reanalysis differences in age are likely caused by differences in the residual circulation. In particular, the shallow BDC branch accelerates similarly in both reanalyses while the deep branch accelerates in ERA5 and decelerates in ERA–Interim.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Yang ◽  
Chris Huntingford

Abstract. The on-going effects of severe drought in East Africa are causing high levels of malnutrition, hunger, illness and death. Close to 16 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya need food, water and medical assistance (DEC, 2017). Many factors influence drought stress and ability to respond. However, inevitably it is asked: are elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations altering the likelihood of extreme rainfall deficits? We find small increases in probability of this for East African, based on merging the observation-based reanalysis dataset by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) (Dee et al., 2011) with Global Climate Models (GCMs) in the CMIP5 database (Taylor et al., 2012).


Abstract Understanding the connections between latent heating from precipitation and cloud radiative effects is essential for accurately parameterizing cross-scale links between cloud microphysics and global energy and water cycles in climate models. While commonly examined separately, this study adopts two cloud impact parameters (CIPs), the surface radiative cooling efficiency, Rc, and atmospheric radiative heating efficiency, Rh, that explicitly couple cloud radiative effects and precipitation to characterize how efficiently precipitating cloud systems influence the energy budget and water cycle using A-Train observations and two reanalyses. These CIPs exhibit distinct global distributions that suggest cloud energy and water cycle coupling are highly dependent on cloud regime. The dynamic regime (ω500) controls the sign of Rh, while column water vapor (CWV) appears to be the larger control on the magnitude. The magnitude of Rc is highly coupled to the dynamic regime. Observations show that clouds cool the surface very efficiently per unit rainfall at both low and high sea surface temperature (SST) and CWV, but reanalyses only capture the former. Reanalyses fail to simulate strong Rh and moderate Rc in deep convection environments but produce stronger Rc and Rh than observations in shallow, warm rain systems in marine stratocumulus regions. While reanalyses generate fairly similar climatologies in the frequency of environmental states, the response of Rc and Rh to SST and CWV results in systematic differences in zonal and meridional gradients of cloud atmospheric heating and surface cooling relative to A-Train observations that may have significant implications for global circulations and cloud feedbacks.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Staufer ◽  
J. Staehelin ◽  
R. Stübi ◽  
T. Peter ◽  
F. Tummon ◽  
...  

Abstract. Both balloon-borne electrochemical ozonesondes and MOZAIC (measurements of ozone, water vapour, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides by in-service Airbus aircraft) provide very valuable data sets for ozone studies in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UTLS). Although MOZAIC's highly accurate UV-photometers are regularly inspected and recalibrated annually, recent analyses cast some doubt on the long-term stability of their ozone analysers. To investigate this further, we perform a 16 yr comparison (1994–2009) of UTLS ozone measurements from balloon-borne ozonesondes and MOZAIC. The analysis uses fully three-dimensional trajectories computed from ERA-Interim (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-analysis) wind fields to find matches between the two measurement platforms. Although different sensor types (Brewer-Mast and Electrochemical Concentration Cell ozonesondes) were used, most of the 28 launch sites considered show considerable differences of up to 25% compared to MOZAIC in the mid-1990s, followed by a systematic tendency to smaller differences of around 5–10% in subsequent years. The reason for the difference before 1998 remains unclear, but observations from both sondes and MOZAIC require further examination to be reliable enough for use in robust long-term trend analyses starting before 1998. According to our analysis, ozonesonde measurements at tropopause altitudes appear to be rather insensitive to changing the type of the Electrochemical Concentration Cell ozonesonde, provided the cathode sensing solution strength remains unchanged. Scoresbysund (Greenland) showed systematically 5% higher readings after changing from Science Pump Corporation sondes to ENSCI Corporation sondes, while a 1.0% KI cathode electrolyte was retained.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (24) ◽  
pp. 9005-9025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Grise ◽  
Brian Medeiros

Abstract This study examines the dynamical mechanisms responsible for changes in midlatitude clouds and cloud radiative effects (CRE) that occur in conjunction with meridional shifts in the jet streams over the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Oceans. When the midlatitude jet shifts poleward, extratropical cyclones and their associated upward vertical velocity anomalies closely follow. As a result, a poleward jet shift contributes to a poleward shift in high-topped storm-track clouds and their associated longwave CRE. However, when the jet shifts poleward, downward vertical velocity anomalies increase equatorward of the jet, contributing to an enhancement of the boundary layer estimated inversion strength (EIS) and an increase in low cloud amount there. Because shortwave CRE depends on the reflection of solar radiation by clouds in all layers, the shortwave cooling effects of midlatitude clouds increase with both upward vertical velocity anomalies and positive EIS anomalies. Over midlatitude oceans where a poleward jet shift contributes to positive EIS anomalies but downward vertical velocity anomalies, the two effects cancel, and net observed changes in shortwave CRE are small. Global climate models generally capture the observed anomalies associated with midlatitude jet shifts. However, there is large intermodel spread in the shortwave CRE anomalies, with a subset of models showing a large shortwave cloud radiative warming over midlatitude oceans with a poleward jet shift. In these models, midlatitude shortwave CRE is sensitive to vertical velocity perturbations, but the observed sensitivity to EIS perturbations is underestimated. Consequently, these models might incorrectly estimate future midlatitude cloud feedbacks in regions where appreciable changes in both vertical velocity and EIS are projected.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ploeger ◽  
Mohamadou Diallo ◽  
Edward Charlesworth ◽  
Paul Konopka ◽  
Bernard Legras ◽  
...  

<p>This paper investigates the global stratospheric Brewer-Dobson circulation (BDC) in the ERA5 meteorological reanalysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The analysis is based on simulations of stratospheric mean age of air, including the full age spectrum, with the Lagrangian transport model CLaMS, driven by winds and total diabatic heating rates from the reanalysis. ERA5-based results are compared to those of the preceding ERA-Interim reanalysis. Our results show a significantly slower BDC for ERA5 than for ERA-Interim, manifesting in weaker diabatic heating rates and larger age of air. In the tropical lower stratosphere, heating rates are 30-40% weaker in ERA5, likely correcting a known bias in ERA-Interim. Above, ERA5 age of air appears slightly high-biased and the BDC slightly slow compared to tracer observations. The age trend in ERA5 over 1989-2018 is negative throughout the stratosphere, as climate models predict in response to global warming. However, the age decrease is not linear over the period but exhibits steplike changes which could be caused by muti-annual variability or changes in the assimilation system. Over the 2002-2012 period, ERA5 age shows a similar hemispheric dipole trend pattern as ERA-Interim, with age increasing in the NH and decreasing in the SH. Shifts in the age spectrum peak and residual circulation transit times indicate that reanalysis differences in age are likely caused by differences in the residual circulation. In particular, the shallow BDC branch accelerates similarly in both reanalyses while the deep branch accelerates in ERA5 and decelerates in ERA-Interim.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seraphine Hauser ◽  
Christian M. Grams ◽  
Michael Riemer ◽  
Peter Knippertz ◽  
Franziska Teubler

<p>Quasi-stationary, persistent, and recurrent states of the large-scale extratropical circulation, so-called weather regimes, characterize the atmospheric variability on sub-seasonal timescales of several days to a few weeks. Weather regimes featuring a blocking anticyclone are of particular interest due to their long lifetime and potential for high-impact weather. However, state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction and climate models struggle to correctly represent blocking life cycles, which results in large forecast errors at the medium-range to sub-seasonal timescale. Despite progress in recent years, we are still lacking a process-based conceptual understanding of blocked regime dynamics, which hinders a better representation of blocks in numerical models. In particular the relative contributions of dry and moist processes in the onset and maintenance of a block remain unclear.</p><p>Here we aim to revisit the dynamics of blocking in the Euro-Atlantic region. To this end we investigate the life cycles of blocked weather regimes from a potential vorticity (PV) perspective in ERA5 reanalysis data (from 1979 to present) from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. We develop a diagnostic PV framework that allows the tracking of negative PV anomalies associated with blocked weather regimes. Complemented by piecewise PV-tendencies - separated into advective and diabatic PV tendencies - we are able to disentangle different physical processes affecting the amplitude evolution of negative PV anomalies associated with blocked regimes. Most importantly, this approach newly enables us to distinguish between the roles of dry and moist dynamics in the initiation and maintenance of blocked weather regimes in a common framework. A first application demonstrates the functionality of the developed PV framework and corroborates the importance of moist-diabatic processes in the initiation and maintenance of a block in a regime life cycle. </p>


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