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Title: Clouds and Convective Self-Aggregation in a Multimodel Ensemble of Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Simulations

Journal Article · · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2020ms002138· OSTI ID:1756382
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  1. Florida State Univ., Tallahassee, FL (United States)
  2. Max Planck Inst. for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  3. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
  4. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
  5. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  6. Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France). Lab. de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD)/IPSL/CNRS
  7. Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
  8. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  9. Univ. de Toulouse (France). Lab. d'Aerologie, CNRS, UPS
  10. Delft Univ. of Technology (Netherlands)
  11. Indian Inst. of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (India)
  12. Univ. of Miami, Miami, FL (United States)
  13. Delft Univ. of Technology (Netherlands); Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
  14. Univ. of Reading, Reading (United Kingdom)
  15. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
  16. Univ. of Tokyo, Kashiwa (Japan)
  17. Univ. of Tokyo (Japan)
  18. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama (Japan)
  19. Indian Inst. for Tropical Meteorology, Pune (India)
  20. Max Planck Inst. for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany); Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France). Lab. de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD)/IPSL/CNRS
  21. Univ. de Toulouse (France). CNRM, Meteo-France, CNRS
  22. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  23. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
  24. Monash Univ., Melbourne, VIC (Australia)
  25. Met Office, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  26. Wageningen Univ. (Netherlands)
  27. NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab., Princeton, NJ (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Model Intercomparison Project (RCEMIP) is an intercomparison of multiple types of numerical models configured in radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE). RCE is an idealization of the tropical atmosphere that has long been used to study basic questions in climate science. Here, we employ RCE to investigate the role that clouds and convective activity play in determining cloud feedbacks, climate sensitivity, the state of convective aggregation, and the equilibrium climate. RCEMIP is unique among intercomparisons in its inclusion of a wide range of model types, including atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs), single column models (SCMs), cloud-resolving models (CRMs), large eddy simulations (LES), and global cloud-resolving models (GCRMs). The first results are presented from the RCEMIP ensemble of more than 30 models. While there are large differences across the RCEMIP ensemble in the representation of mean profiles of temperature, humidity, and cloudiness, in a majority of models anvil clouds rise, warm, and decrease in area coverage in response to an increase in sea surface temperature (SST). Nearly all models exhibit self-aggregation in large domains and agree that self-aggregation acts to dry and warm the troposphere, reduce high cloudiness, and increase cooling to space. The degree of self-aggregation exhibits no clear tendency with warming. There is a wide range of climate sensitivities, but models with parameterized convection tend to have lower climate sensitivities than models with explicit convection. In models with parameterized convection, aggregated simulations have lower climate sensitivities than unaggregated simulations.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF); Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; 1830724; 1830729; 027.015.G03; 1852977; IA 1844590; 000057‐00414
OSTI ID:
1756382
Journal Information:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 12, Issue 9; ISSN 1942-2466
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
convection
clouds
climate sensitivity
self-aggregation
radiative-convective equilibrium
cloud feedbacks