lmd_Dufresne2004_abstracts.html

2004 .

J. Quaas, O. Boucher, J.-L. Dufresne, and H. Treut. Impacts of greenhouse gases and aerosol direct and indirect effects on clouds and radiation in atmospheric GCM simulations of the 1930 1989 period. Climate Dynamics, 23:779-789, December 2004. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

Among anthropogenic perturbations of the Earths atmosphere, greenhouse gases and aerosols are considered to have a major impact on the energy budget through their impact on radiative fluxes. We use three ensembles of simulations with the LMDZ general circulation model to investigate the radiative impacts of five species of greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, CFC-11 and CFC-12) and sulfate aerosols for the period 1930 1989. Since our focus is on the atmospheric changes in clouds and radiation from greenhouse gases and aerosols, we prescribed sea-surface temperatures in these simulations. Besides the direct impact on radiation through the greenhouse effect and scattering of sunlight by aerosols, strong radiative impacts of both perturbations through changes in cloudiness are analysed. The increase in greenhouse gas concentration leads to a reduction of clouds at all atmospheric levels, thus decreasing the total greenhouse effect in the longwave spectrum and increasing absorption of solar radiation by reduction of cloud albedo. Increasing anthropogenic aerosol burden results in a decrease in high-level cloud cover through a cooling of the atmosphere, and an increase in the low-level cloud cover through the second aerosol indirect effect. The trend in low-level cloud lifetime due to aerosols is quantified to 0.5 min day^-1 decade^-1 for the simulation period. The different changes in high (decrease) and low-level (increase) cloudiness due to the response of cloud processes to aerosols impact shortwave radiation in a contrariwise manner, and the net effect is slightly positive. The total aerosol effect including the aerosol direct and first indirect effects remains strongly negative.

V. Eymet, J. L. Dufresne, P. Ricchiazzi, R. Fournier, and S. Blanco. Long-wave radiative analysis of cloudy scattering atmospheres using a net exchange formulation. Atmospheric Research, 72:239-261, November 2004. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

The Net Exchange Formulation (NEF) is an alternative to the usual radiative transfer equation. It was proposed in 1967 by Green [Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 93 (1967) 371] for atmospheric sciences and by Hottel [H.C. Hottel, A.F. Sarofim. Radiative Transfer McGraw Hill, New York, 1967] for engineering sciences. Until now, the NEF has been used only in a very few cases for atmospheric studies. Recently we have developed a long-wave radiative code based on this formulation for a GCM of the Mars planet. Here, we will present results for the Earth atmosphere, obtained with a Monte Carlo Method based on the NEF. In this method, fluxes are not addressed any more. The basic variables are the net exchange rates (NER) between each pair of atmospheric layer ( i, j), i.e. the radiative power emitted by i and absorbed by j minus the radiative power emitted by j and absorbed by i. The graphical representation of the NER matrix highlights the radiative exchanges that dominate the radiative budget of the atmosphere and allows one to have a very good insight of the radiative exchanges. Results will be presented for clear sky atmospheres with Mid-Latitude Summer and Sub-Arctic Winter temperature profiles, and for the same atmospheres with three different types of clouds. The effect of scattering on long-wave radiative exchanges will also be analysed.

N. M. Mahowald and J.-L. Dufresne. Sensitivity of TOMS aerosol index to boundary layer height: Implications for detection of mineral aerosol sources. Geophysical Research Letters, 31:3103, February 2004. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

The TOMS aerosol index (AI) is proposed as a powerful tool in determining the sources of mineral aerosols. The sensitivity of the AI to the height of the aerosol layer has been noted previously, but the implications of this sensitivity for deducing sources has not been explicitly considered. Here, we present a methodology and sensitivity test to show the importance of spatial and temporal variations of the planetary boundary layer height to deducing sources using the AI. These results suggest that while dry topographic low sources may be large sources of desert dust, conclusions eliminating other sources may be premature, especially when these sources occur on the edges of deserts, where boundary layer heights are lower, and human influences potentially more important. The compounding problem of differentiating downwind transport and local sources suggests it may not currently be possible to use the AI to conclusively determine mineral aerosol source regions.

S. Bony, J.-L. Dufresne, H. Le Treut, J.-J. Morcrette, and C. Senior. On dynamic and thermodynamic components of cloud changes. Climate Dynamics, 22:71-86, 2004. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

Clouds are sensitive to changes in both the large-scale circulation and the thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere. In the tropics, temperature changes that occur on seasonal to decadal time scales are often associated with circulation changes. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the part of cloud variations that results from a change in the dynamics from the part that may result from the temperature change itself. This study proposes a simple framework to unravel the dynamic and non-dynamic (referred to as thermodynamic) components of the cloud response to climate variations. It is used to analyze the contrasted response, to a prescribed ocean warming, of the tropically-averaged cloud radiative forcing (CRF) simulated by the ECMWF, LMD and UKMO climate models. In each model, the dynamic component largely dominates the CRF response at the regional scale, but this is the thermodynamic component that explains most of the average CRF response to the imposed perturbation. It is shown that this component strongly depends on the behaviour of the low-level clouds that occur in regions of moderate subsidence (e.g. in the trade wind regions). These clouds exhibit a moderate sensitivity to temperature changes, but this is mostly their huge statistical weight that explains their large influence on the tropical radiation budget. Several propositions are made for assessing the sensitivity of clouds to changes in temperature and in large-scale motions using satellite observations and meteorological analyses on the one hand, and mesoscale models on the other hand.