Preliminary results of a three-dimensional radiative transfer model
- Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
Clouds act as the primary modulator of the Earth`s radiation at the top of the atmosphere, within the atmospheric column, and at the Earth`s surface. They interact with both shortwave and longwave radiation, but it is primarily in the case of shortwave where most of the uncertainty lies because of the difficulties in treating scattered solar radiation. To understand cloud-radiative interactions, radiative transfer models portray clouds as plane-parallel homogeneous entities to ease the computational physics. Unfortunately, clouds are far from being homogeneous, and large differences between measurement and theory point to a stronger need to understand and model cloud macrophysical properties. In an attempt to better comprehend the role of cloud morphology on the 3-dimensional radiation field, a Monte Carlo model has been developed. This model can simulate broadband shortwave radiation fluxes while incorporating all of the major atmospheric constituents. The model is used to investigate the cloud absorption anomaly where cloud absorption measurements exceed theoretical estimates and to examine the efficacy of ERBE measurements and cloud field experiments. 3 figs.
- Research Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States). Environmental Sciences Div.
- OSTI ID:
- 232601
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER-0661T; ON: DE96000982; TRN: 96:002004-0013
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Sep 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Elements of change 1994. Climate-radiation feedbacks: The current state of the science; PB: 123 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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