Subtropical marine low stratiform cloud deck spatial errors in the E3SMv1 Atmosphere Model

Brunke, Michael A.; Ma, Po Lun; Eyre, Jack; Rasch, Philip J.; Sorooshian, Armin; Zeng, Xubin

doi:10.1029/2019GL084747

Title: Subtropical marine low stratiform cloud deck spatial errors in the E3SMv1 Atmosphere Model

Journal Article · Sat Nov 16 00:00:00 EST 2019 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084747· OSTI ID:1614872

Brunke, Michael A. ^[1];

^[2]; Eyre, Jack ^[3]; Rasch, Philip J. ^[2]; Sorooshian, Armin ^[3]; Zeng, Xubin ^[3]

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)
University of Arizona

Marine low-level clouds continue to be poorly simulated in models despite many studies and field experiments devoted to their improvement. Here we focus on the spatial errors in the cloud decks in the Department of Energy Earth system model (E3SM) relative to the satellite climatology by calculating centroid distances, area ratios, and overlap ratios. Since model dynamics is better simulated than clouds, these errors are attributed primarily to the model physics. To gain additional insight, we performed a sensitivity run in which model winds were nudged to those of reanalysis. This results in a large change (but not necessarily an improvement) in the simulated cloud decks. These differences between simulations are mainly due to the interactions between model dynamics and physics. These results suggest that both model physics (widely recognized) and its interaction with dynamics (less recognized) are important to model improvement in simulating these low-level clouds.

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Research Organization:: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

DOE Contract Number:: AC05-76RL01830

OSTI ID:: 1614872

Report Number(s):: PNNL-SA-148413

Journal Information:: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 46, Issue 21

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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