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Title: A sensitivity analysis of cloud properties to CLUBB parameters in the single-column Community Atmosphere Model (SCAM5)

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2014MS000315· OSTI ID:1168894
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [2];  [4];  [2];  [2];  [5]
  1. Atmosphere Science and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland Washington USA; State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing China; Climate Change Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing China
  2. Atmosphere Science and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland Washington USA
  3. Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Wisconsin USA
  4. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder Colorado USA
  5. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing China; Climate Change Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing China
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In this study, we investigate the sensitivity of simulated shallow cumulus and stratocumulus clouds to selected tunable parameters of Cloud Layers Unified by Binormals (CLUBB) in the single column version of Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (SCAM5). A quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) sampling approach is adopted to effectively explore the high-dimensional parameter space and a generalized linear model is adopted to study the responses of simulated cloud fields to tunable parameters. One stratocumulus and two shallow convection cases are configured at both coarse and fine vertical resolutions in this study.. Our results show that most of the variance in simulated cloud fields can be explained by a small number of tunable parameters. The parameters related to Newtonian and buoyancy-damping terms of total water flux are found to be the most influential parameters for stratocumulus. For shallow cumulus, the most influential parameters are those related to skewness of vertical velocity, reflecting the strong coupling between cloud properties and dynamics in this regime. The influential parameters in the stratocumulus case are sensitive to the choice of the vertical resolution while little sensitivity is found for the shallow convection cases, as eddy mixing length (or dissipation time scale) plays a more important role and depends more strongly on the vertical resolution in stratocumulus than in shallow convections. The influential parameters remain almost unchanged when the number of tunable parameters increases from 16 to 35. This study improves understanding of the CLUBB behavior associated with parameter uncertainties.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1168894
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-101254; KP1703020; KJ0403000
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 3; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 43 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (6)

Investigating the linkage between simulated precipitation climatology and ENSO-related precipitation anomaly based on multi-model and perturbed parameter ensembles journal September 2019
Sensitivity of Turbine-Height Wind Speeds to Parameters in Planetary Boundary-Layer and Surface-Layer Schemes in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model journal July 2016
A Cloud Top Radiative Cooling Model Coupled With CLUBB in the Community Atmosphere Model: Description and Simulation of Low Clouds journal April 2019
Subgrid variations of the cloud water and droplet number concentration over the tropical ocean: satellite observations and implications for warm rain simulations in climate models journal January 2019
Quantifying variations in shortwave aerosol–cloud–radiation interactions using local meteorology and cloud state constraints journal January 2019
Significant improvement of cloud representation in the global climate model MRI-ESM2 journal January 2019

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Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
shallow cumulus and stratocumulus clouds
Cloud Layers Unified by Binormals (CLUBB)
Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (SCAM5)