lmd_Dufresne2012_abstracts.html

2012 .

C. Nam, S. Bony, J.-L. Dufresne, and H. Chepfer. The too few, too bright tropical low-cloud problem in CMIP5 models. Geophysical Research Letters, 39:21801, November 2012. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

Previous generations of climate models have been shown to under-estimate the occurrence of tropical low-level clouds and to over-estimate their radiative effects. This study analyzes outputs from multiple climate models participating in the Fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) using the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project Observations Simulator Package (COSP), and compares them with different satellite data sets. Those include CALIPSO lidar observations, PARASOL mono-directional reflectances and CERES radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. We show that current state-of-the-art climate models predict overly bright low-clouds, even for a correct low-cloud cover. The impact of these biases on the Earth' radiation budget, however, is reduced by compensating errors. Those include the tendency of models to under-estimate the low-cloud cover and to over-estimate the occurrence of mid- and high-clouds above low-clouds. Finally, we show that models poorly represent the dependence of the vertical structure of low-clouds on large-scale environmental conditions. The implications of this too few, too bright low-cloud problem for climate sensitivity and model development are discussed.

D. Konsta, H. Chepfer, and J.-L. Dufresne. A process oriented characterization of tropical oceanic clouds for climate model evaluation, based on a statistical analysis of daytime A-train observations. Climate Dynamics, 39:2091-2108, November 2012. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

This paper aims at characterizing how different key cloud properties (cloud fraction, cloud vertical distribution, cloud reflectance, a surrogate of the cloud optical depth) vary as a function of the others over the tropical oceans. The correlations between the different cloud properties are built from 2 years of collocated A-train observations (CALIPSO-GOCCP and MODIS) at a scale close to cloud processes; it results in a characterization of the physical processes in tropical clouds, that can be used to better understand cloud behaviors, and constitute a powerful tool to develop and evaluate cloud parameterizations in climate models. First, we examine a case study of shallow cumulus cloud observed simultaneously by the two sensors (CALIPSO, MODIS), and develop a methodology that allows to build global scale statistics by keeping the separation between clear and cloudy areas at the pixel level (250, 330 m). Then we build statistical instantaneous relationships between the cloud cover, the cloud vertical distribution and the cloud reflectance. The vertical cloud distribution indicates that the optically thin clouds (optical thickness 1.5) dominate the boundary layer over the trade wind regions. Optically thick clouds (optical thickness 3.4) are composed of high and mid-level clouds associated with deep convection along the ITCZ and SPCZ and over the warm pool, and by stratocumulus low level clouds located along the East coast of tropical oceans. The cloud properties are analyzed as a function of the large scale circulation regime. Optically thick high clouds are dominant in convective regions (CF 80 %), while low level clouds with low optical thickness (3.5) are present in regimes of subsidence but in convective regimes as well, associated principally to low cloud fractions (CF 50 %). A focus on low-level clouds allows us to quantify how the cloud optical depth increases with cloud top altitude and with cloud fraction.

J. H. Jiang, H. Su, C. Zhai, V. S. Perun, A. Del Genio, L. S. Nazarenko, L. J. Donner, L. Horowitz, C. Seman, J. Cole, A. Gettelman, M. A. Ringer, L. Rotstayn, S. Jeffrey, T. Wu, F. Brient, J.-L. Dufresne, H. Kawai, T. Koshiro, M. Watanabe, T. S. LÉCuyer, E. M. Volodin, T. Iversen, H. Drange, M. D. S. Mesquita, W. G. Read, J. W. Waters, B. Tian, J. Teixeira, and G. L. Stephens. Evaluation of cloud and water vapor simulations in CMIP5 climate models using NASA A-Train satellite observations. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 117:14105, July 2012. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

Using NASA's A-Train satellite measurements, we evaluate the accuracy of cloud water content (CWC) and water vapor mixing ratio (H₂O) outputs from 19 climate models submitted to the Phase 5 of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), and assess improvements relative to their counterparts for the earlier CMIP3. We find more than half of the models show improvements from CMIP3 to CMIP5 in simulating column-integrated cloud amount, while changes in water vapor simulation are insignificant. For the 19 CMIP5 models, the model spreads and their differences from the observations are larger in the upper troposphere (UT) than in the lower or middle troposphere (L/MT). The modeled mean CWCs over tropical oceans range from 3% to 15× of the observations in the UT and 40% to 2× of the observations in the L/MT. For modeled H₂Os, the mean values over tropical oceans range from 1% to 2× of the observations in the UT and within 10% of the observations in the L/MT. The spatial distributions of clouds at 215 hPa are relatively well-correlated with observations, noticeably better than those for the L/MT clouds. Although both water vapor and clouds are better simulated in the L/MT than in the UT, there is no apparent correlation between the model biases in clouds and water vapor. Numerical scores are used to compare different model performances in regards to spatial mean, variance and distribution of CWC and H₂O over tropical oceans. Model performances at each pressure level are ranked according to the average of all the relevant scores for that level.

C. Déandreis, Y. Balkanski, J. L. Dufresne, and A. Cozic. Radiative forcing estimates of sulfate aerosol in coupled climate-chemistry models with emphasis on the role of the temporal variability. Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, 12:5583-5602, June 2012. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

This paper describes the impact on the sulfate aerosol radiative effects of coupling the radiative code of a global circulation model with a chemistry-aerosol module. With this coupling, temporal variations of sulfate aerosol concentrations influence the estimate of aerosol radiative impacts. Effects of this coupling have been assessed on net fluxes, radiative forcing and temperature for the direct and first indirect effects of sulfate. <BR /><BR /> The direct effect respond almost linearly to rapid changes in concentrations whereas the first indirect effect shows a strong non-linearity. In particular, sulfate temporal variability causes a modification of the short wave net fluxes at the top of the atmosphere of +0.24 and +0.22 W m^-2 for the present and preindustrial periods, respectively. This change is small compared to the value of the net flux at the top of the atmosphere (about 240 W m^-2). The effect is more important in regions with low-level clouds and intermediate sulfate aerosol concentrations (from 0.1 to 0.8 μg (SO₄) m^-3 in our model). <BR /><BR /> The computation of the aerosol direct radiative forcing is quite straightforward and the temporal variability has little effect on its mean value. In contrast, quantifying the first indirect radiative forcing requires tackling technical issues first. We show that the preindustrial sulfate concentrations have to be calculated with the same meteorological trajectory used for computing the present ones. If this condition is not satisfied, it introduces an error on the estimation of the first indirect radiative forcing. Solutions are proposed to assess radiative forcing properly. In the reference method, the coupling between chemistry and climate results in a global average increase of 8% in the first indirect radiative forcing. This change reaches 50% in the most sensitive regions. However, the reference method is not suited to run long climate simulations. We present other methods that are simpler to implement in a coupled chemistry/climate model and that offer the possibility to assess radiative forcing.