Identification

Title

Clouds, radiation, and atmospheric circulation in the present‐day climate and under climate change

Abstract

By interacting with radiation, clouds modulate the flow of energy through the Earth system, the circulation of the atmosphere, and regional climate. We review the impact of cloud-radiation interactions for the atmospheric circulation in the present-day climate, its internal variability and its response to climate change. After summarizing cloud-controlling factors and cloud-radiative effects, we clarify the scope and limits of the Clouds On-Off Klimate Model Intercomparison Experiment (COOKIE) and cloud-locking modeling methods. COOKIE showed that the presence of cloud-radiative effects shapes the circulation in the present-day climate in many important ways, including the width of the tropical rain belts and the position of the extratropical storm tracks. Cloud locking, in contrast, identified how clouds affect internal variability and the circulation response to global warming. This includes strong, but model-dependent, shortwave and longwave cloud impacts on the El-Nino Southern Oscillation, and the finding that most of the poleward circulation expansion in response to global warming can be attributed to radiative changes in clouds. We highlight the circulation impact of shortwave changes from low-level clouds and longwave changes from rising high-level clouds, and the contribution of these cloud changes to model differences in the circulation response to global warming. The review in particular draws attention to the role of cloud-radiative heating within the atmosphere. We close by raising some open questions which, among others, concern the need for studying the cloud impact on regional scales and opportunities created by the next generation of global storm-resolving models.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7z03d55

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-03-25T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact