Bodas-Salcedo, A, Hill, PG, Furtado, K et al. (5 more authors) (2016) Large Contribution of Supercooled Liquid Clouds to the Solar Radiation Budget of the Southern Ocean. Journal of Climate, 29 (11). pp. 4213-4228. ISSN 0894-8755
Abstract
The Southern Ocean is a critical region for global climate, yet large cloud and solar radiation biases over the Southern Ocean are a long-standing problem in climate models and are poorly understood, leading to biases in simulated sea surface temperatures. This study shows that supercooled liquid clouds are central to understanding and simulating the Southern Ocean environment. A combination of satellite observational data and detailed radiative transfer calculations is used to quantify the impact of cloud phase and cloud vertical structure on the reflected solar radiation in the Southern Hemisphere summer. It is found that clouds with supercooled liquid tops dominate the population of liquid clouds. The observations show that clouds with supercooled liquid tops contribute between 27% and 38% to the total reflected solar radiation between 40° and 70°S, and climate models are found to poorly simulate these clouds. The results quantify the importance of supercooled liquid clouds in the Southern Ocean environment and highlight the need to improve understanding of the physical processes that control these clouds in order to improve their simulation in numerical models. This is not only important for improving the simulation of present-day climate and climate variability, but also relevant for increasing confidence in climate feedback processes and future climate projections.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (http://www.copyright.com). Questions about permission to use materials for which AMS holds the copyright can also be directed to the AMS Permissions Officer at permissions@ametsoc.org. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (http://www.ametsoc.org/CopyrightInformation). |
Keywords: | Physical Meteorology and Climatology; Climate change; Cloud radiative effects; Clouds; Models and modeling; Climate models; Model evaluation/performance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Feb 2017 12:38 |
Last Modified: | 17 Sep 2020 09:58 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0564.1 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Meteorological Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0564.1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:110951 |