气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Mid-level clouds over the Sahara in a convection-permitting regional model

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DOI	10.1007/s00382-020-05188-4
	Mid-level clouds over the Sahara in a convection-permitting regional model
	Mantsis D.F.; Sherwood S.; Dixit V.; Morrison H.; Thompson G.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	0930-7575
起始页码	3425
结束页码	3439
卷号	54
英文摘要	The simulation of Saharan mid tropospheric clouds is investigated with the weather research and forecasting (WRF) regional atmospheric model at convection permitting (4 km) horizontal grid-spacing. We identify two potential problems in such simulations: one that affects cloud cover, and another that affects the mean and geographic patterns of both cloud and precipitation. Our simulations show that using a vertical grid typical of GCMs (38 levels) inhibits the formation of Saharan mid-level clouds. In particular, it underestimates the supercooled water content that often resides at the top of these clouds, in favour of ice which falls out of the cloud quickly. When the vertical resolution becomes high enough to allow layers of supercooled water and ice to exist separately, the simulation of the Saharan mid-level clouds improves significantly. Additional improvement is achieved by using realistic high resolution surface albedo, which also shows that low albedo areas favour the formation of mid-level clouds much more than high albedo ones. The simulation of precipitation on the northern edge of the Sahel is also improved with the use of realistic surface albedo. Overall, despite the disagreement of the simulated and the observed clouds, our results show that using increased resolution and realistic surface albedo seems to fully reproduce their observed radiative effect. © 2020, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
英文关键词	Mid-level clouds; Saharan clouds; Surface albedo; West African monsoon
语种	英语
scopus关键词	albedo; atmospheric convection; climate modeling; cloud; general circulation model; supercooling; water content; Sahara
来源期刊	Climate Dynamics
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/145529
作者单位	Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Mantsis D.F.,Sherwood S.,Dixit V.,et al. Mid-level clouds over the Sahara in a convection-permitting regional model[J],2020,54.
APA	Mantsis D.F.,Sherwood S.,Dixit V.,Morrison H.,&Thompson G..(2020).Mid-level clouds over the Sahara in a convection-permitting regional model.Climate Dynamics,54.
MLA	Mantsis D.F.,et al."Mid-level clouds over the Sahara in a convection-permitting regional model".Climate Dynamics 54(2020).