Identification

Title

An evaluation of the representation of tropical tropopause cirrus in the CESM/CARMA Model using satellite and aircraft observations

Abstract

Observations from the third campaign of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX 3) field mission and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations satellite mission are used to evaluate simulations of tropical tropopause layer (TTL) cirrus clouds in the Community Earth System Model's (CESM) Community Atmosphere Model, CAM5. In this study, CAM5 is coupled with a sectional ice cloud model, the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmospheres (CARMA). We find that both model variants underrepresent cloud frequency along the ATTREX 3 flight path and both poorly represent relative humidity in the TTL. Furthermore, simulated in-cloud ice size distributions contained erroneous amounts of ice crystals throughout the distribution. In response, we present a modified ice cloud fraction scheme that boosts the cloud fraction within the TTL. Due to coarse vertical model resolution in the TTL, we also prescribe a 2-K decrease in cold point tropopause temperatures to better align with observed temperatures. Our modifications improve both CAM5 and CAM5/CARMA's in-cloud ice size and mass distributions. However, only CAM5/CARMA has a significant improvement in cloud frequency and relative humidity. An investigation of cloud extinction in the ATTREX 3 region found that each model variant struggles to reproduce observed extinctions. As a first-order approximation, we introduce randomly generated temperature perturbations to simulate the effect of gravity waves into the CAM5/CARMA simulation. These gravity waves significantly increase the incidence of low extinction (<0.02 km(-1)) values, ice cloud fraction between 16 and 18 km, and ice crystal smaller than 100-mu m concentrations but provided only small changes to high extinction values.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cz39zm

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

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-08-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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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