ALBERT

Description: The authors present the global plane-parallel shortwave albedo bias of liquid clouds for two months, July 2003 and January 2004. The cloud optical properties necessary to perform the bias calculations come from the operational Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and MODIS Aqua level-3 datasets. These data, along with ancillary surface albedo and atmospheric information consistent with the MODIS retrievals, are inserted into a broadband shortwave radiative transfer model to calculate the fluxes at the atmospheric column boundaries. The plane-parallel homogeneous (PPH) calculations are based on the mean cloud properties, while independent column approximation (ICA) calculations are based either on 1D histograms of optical thickness or joint 2D histograms of optical thickness and effective radius. The (positive) PPH albedo bias is simply the difference between PPH and ICA albedo calculations. Two types of biases are therefore examined: 1) the bias due to the horizontal inhomogeneity of optical thickness alone (the effective radius is set to the grid mean value) and 2) the bias due to simultaneous variations of optical thickness and effective radius as derived from their joint histograms. The authors find that the global bias of albedo (liquid cloud portion of the grid boxes only) is ∼+0.03, which corresponds to roughly 8% of the global liquid cloud albedo and is only modestly sensitive to the inclusion of horizontal effective radius variability and time of day, but depends strongly on season and latitude. This albedo bias translates to ∼3–3.5 W m−2 of bias (stronger negative values) in the diurnally averaged global shortwave cloud radiative forcing, assuming homogeneous conditions for the fraction of the grid box not covered by liquid clouds; zonal values can be as high as 8 W m−2. Finally, the (positive) broadband atmospheric absorptance bias is about an order of magnitude smaller than the albedo bias. The substantial magnitude of the PPH bias underlines the importance of predicting subgrid variability in GCMs and accounting for its effects on cloud–radiation interactions.

Description: In our most advanced modeling tools for climate change prediction, namely General Circulation Models (GCMs), the schemes used to calculate the budget of solar and thermal radiation commonly assume that clouds are horizontally homogeneous at scales as large as a few hundred kilometers. However, this assumption, used for convenience, computational speed, and lack of knowledge on cloud small scale variability, leads to erroneous estimates of the radiation budget. This paper provides a global picture of the solar radiation errors at scales of approximately 100 km due to warm (liquid phase) clouds only. To achieve this, we use cloud retrievals from the instrument MODIS on the Terra and Aqua satellites, along with atmospheric and surface information, as input into a GCM-style radiative transfer algorithm. Since the MODIS product contains information on cloud variability below 100 km we can run the radiation algorithm both for the variable and the (assumed) homogeneous clouds. The difference between these calculations for reflected or transmitted solar radiation constitutes the bias that GCMs would commit if they were able to perfectly predict the properties of warm clouds, but then assumed they were homogeneous for radiation calculations. We find that the global average of this bias is approx.2-3 times larger in terms of energy than the additional amount of thermal energy that would be trapped if we were to double carbon dioxide from current concentrations. We should therefore make a greater effort to predict horizontal cloud variability in GCMs and account for its effects in radiation calculations.

Description: 3D aerosol-cloud interaction is examined by analyzing two images containing cumulus clouds in biomass burning regions in Brazil. The research consists of two parts. The first part focuses on identifying 3D clo ud impacts on the reflectance of pixel selected for the MODIS aerosol retrieval based purely on observations. The second part of the resea rch combines the observations with radiative transfer computations to identify key parameters in 3D aerosol-cloud interaction. We found that 3D cloud-induced enhancement depends on optical properties of nearb y clouds as well as wavelength. The enhancement is too large to be ig nored. Associated biased error in 1D aerosol optical thickness retrie val ranges from 50% to 140% depending on wavelength and optical prope rties of nearby clouds as well as aerosol optical thickness. We caution the community to be prudent when applying 1D approximations in comp uting solar radiation in dear regions adjacent to clouds or when usin g traditional retrieved aerosol optical thickness in aerosol indirect effect research.