DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: A radiative transfer module for calculating photolysis rates and solar heating in climate models: Solar-J v7.5

Abstract

Solar-J is a comprehensive radiative transfer model for the solar spectrum that addresses the needs of both solar heating and photochemistry in Earth system models. Solar-J is a spectral extension of Cloud-J, a standard in many chemical models that calculates photolysis rates in the 0.18–0.8 µm region. The Cloud-J core consists of an eight-stream scattering, plane-parallel radiative transfer solver with corrections for sphericity. Cloud-J uses cloud quadrature to accurately average over correlated cloud layers. It uses the scattering phase function of aerosols and clouds expanded to eighth order and thus avoids isotropic-equivalent approximations prevalent in most solar heating codes. The spectral extension from 0.8 to 12 µm enables calculation of both scattered and absorbed sunlight and thus aerosol direct radiative effects and heating rates throughout the Earth's atmosphere. Furthermore, the Solar-J extension adopts the correlated-k gas absorption bins, primarily water vapor, from the shortwave Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for general circulation model (GCM) applications (RRTMG-SW). Solar-J successfully matches RRTMG-SW's tropospheric heating profile in a clear-sky, aerosol-free, tropical atmosphere. Here, we compare both codes in cloudy atmospheres with a liquid-water stratus cloud and an ice-crystal cirrus cloud. For the stratus cloud, both models use the same physical properties, and we findmore » a systematic low bias of about 3 % in planetary albedo across all solar zenith angles caused by RRTMG-SW's two-stream scattering. Discrepancies with the cirrus cloud using any of RRTMG-SW's three different parameterizations are as large as about 20–40 % depending on the solar zenith angles and occur throughout the atmosphere. Effectively, Solar-J has combined the best components of RRTMG-SW and Cloud-J to build a high-fidelity module for the scattering and absorption of sunlight in the Earth's atmosphere, for which the three major components – wavelength integration, scattering, and averaging over cloud fields – all have comparably small errors. More accurate solutions with Solar-J come with increased computational costs, about 5 times that of RRTMG-SW for a single atmosphere. There are options for reduced costs or computational acceleration that would bring costs down while maintaining improved fidelity and balanced errors.« less

Authors:
ORCiD logo; ORCiD logo; ; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
OSTI Identifier:
1367778
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1374519
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-732404
Journal ID: ISSN 1991-9603
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0007021; SC0012536; AC52-07NA27344; AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Published Article
Journal Name:
Geoscientific Model Development (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Geoscientific Model Development (Online) Journal Volume: 10 Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1991-9603
Publisher:
Copernicus Publications, EGU
Country of Publication:
Germany
Language:
English
Subject:
58 GEOSCIENCES; 97 MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE; 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Citation Formats

Hsu, Juno, Prather, Michael J., Cameron-Smith, Philip, Veidenbaum, Alex, and Nicolau, Alex. A radiative transfer module for calculating photolysis rates and solar heating in climate models: Solar-J v7.5. Germany: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.5194/gmd-10-2525-2017.
Hsu, Juno, Prather, Michael J., Cameron-Smith, Philip, Veidenbaum, Alex, & Nicolau, Alex. A radiative transfer module for calculating photolysis rates and solar heating in climate models: Solar-J v7.5. Germany. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2525-2017
Hsu, Juno, Prather, Michael J., Cameron-Smith, Philip, Veidenbaum, Alex, and Nicolau, Alex. Mon . "A radiative transfer module for calculating photolysis rates and solar heating in climate models: Solar-J v7.5". Germany. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2525-2017.
@article{osti_1367778,
title = {A radiative transfer module for calculating photolysis rates and solar heating in climate models: Solar-J v7.5},
author = {Hsu, Juno and Prather, Michael J. and Cameron-Smith, Philip and Veidenbaum, Alex and Nicolau, Alex},
abstractNote = {Solar-J is a comprehensive radiative transfer model for the solar spectrum that addresses the needs of both solar heating and photochemistry in Earth system models. Solar-J is a spectral extension of Cloud-J, a standard in many chemical models that calculates photolysis rates in the 0.18–0.8 µm region. The Cloud-J core consists of an eight-stream scattering, plane-parallel radiative transfer solver with corrections for sphericity. Cloud-J uses cloud quadrature to accurately average over correlated cloud layers. It uses the scattering phase function of aerosols and clouds expanded to eighth order and thus avoids isotropic-equivalent approximations prevalent in most solar heating codes. The spectral extension from 0.8 to 12 µm enables calculation of both scattered and absorbed sunlight and thus aerosol direct radiative effects and heating rates throughout the Earth's atmosphere. Furthermore, the Solar-J extension adopts the correlated-k gas absorption bins, primarily water vapor, from the shortwave Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for general circulation model (GCM) applications (RRTMG-SW). Solar-J successfully matches RRTMG-SW's tropospheric heating profile in a clear-sky, aerosol-free, tropical atmosphere. Here, we compare both codes in cloudy atmospheres with a liquid-water stratus cloud and an ice-crystal cirrus cloud. For the stratus cloud, both models use the same physical properties, and we find a systematic low bias of about 3 % in planetary albedo across all solar zenith angles caused by RRTMG-SW's two-stream scattering. Discrepancies with the cirrus cloud using any of RRTMG-SW's three different parameterizations are as large as about 20–40 % depending on the solar zenith angles and occur throughout the atmosphere. Effectively, Solar-J has combined the best components of RRTMG-SW and Cloud-J to build a high-fidelity module for the scattering and absorption of sunlight in the Earth's atmosphere, for which the three major components – wavelength integration, scattering, and averaging over cloud fields – all have comparably small errors. More accurate solutions with Solar-J come with increased computational costs, about 5 times that of RRTMG-SW for a single atmosphere. There are options for reduced costs or computational acceleration that would bring costs down while maintaining improved fidelity and balanced errors.},
doi = {10.5194/gmd-10-2525-2017},
journal = {Geoscientific Model Development (Online)},
number = 7,
volume = 10,
place = {Germany},
year = {Mon Jul 03 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Mon Jul 03 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-2525-2017

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 3 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Evaluation of simulated photolysis rates and their response to solar irradiance variability: Middle Atmosphere Photolysis Rate Modeling
journal, May 2016

  • Sukhodolov, Timofei; Rozanov, Eugene; Ball, William T.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 121, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1002/2015JD024277

Comprehensive thematic T-matrix reference database: A 2014–2015 update
journal, July 2016

  • Mishchenko, Michael I.; Zakharova, Nadezhda T.; Khlebtsov, Nikolai G.
  • Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 178
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2015.11.005

Sulfuric acid aerosols in the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets
journal, August 2011

  • McGouldrick, Kevin; Toon, Owen B.; Grinspoon, David H.
  • Planetary and Space Science, Vol. 59, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2010.05.020

Light scattering in planetary atmospheres
journal, October 1974

  • Hansen, James E.; Travis, Larry D.
  • Space Science Reviews, Vol. 16, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1007/BF00168069

Absorption Spectra and Optical Constants of Binary and Ternary Solutions of H 2 SO 4 , HNO 3 , and H 2 O in the Mid Infrared at Atmospheric Temperatures
journal, February 2000

  • Biermann, U. M.; Luo, B. P.; Peter, Th.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol. 104, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1021/jp992349i

Optical constants of ice from the ultraviolet to the microwave
journal, January 1984


The chemical transport model Oslo CTM3
journal, January 2012

  • Søvde, O. A.; Prather, M. J.; Isaksen, I. S. A.
  • Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 5, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.5194/gmd-5-1441-2012

Data-rate-aware FPGA-based acceleration framework for streaming applications
conference, November 2016

  • Rezaei, Siavash; Hernandez-Calderon, Cesar-Alejandro; Mirzamohammadi, Saeed
  • 2016 International Conference on ReConFigurable Computing and FPGAs (ReConFig)
  • DOI: 10.1109/ReConFig.2016.7857162

Radiative transfer for inhomogeneous atmospheres: RRTM, a validated correlated-k model for the longwave
journal, July 1997

  • Mlawer, Eli J.; Taubman, Steven J.; Brown, Patrick D.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 102, Issue D14
  • DOI: 10.1029/97JD00237

Simulations of the Atmospheric General Circulation Using a Cloud-Resolving Model as a Superparameterization of Physical Processes
journal, July 2005

  • Khairoutdinov, Marat; Randall, David; DeMott, Charlotte
  • Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 62, Issue 7
  • DOI: 10.1175/JAS3453.1

Measurements of UV refractive indices and densities of H 2 SO 4 /H 2 O and H 2 SO 4 /HNO 3 /H 2 O solutions
journal, June 1996

  • Beyer, Keith D.; Ravishankara, A. R.; Lovejoy, Edward R.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 101, Issue D9
  • DOI: 10.1029/96JD00937

A global three-dimensional model study of carbonaceous aerosols
journal, August 1996

  • Liousse, C.; Penner, J. E.; Chuang, C.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 101, Issue D14
  • DOI: 10.1029/95JD03426

Microphysical and short-wave radiative structure of stratocumulus clouds over the Southern Ocean: Summer results and seasonal differences
journal, January 1998

  • Boers, R.; Jensen, J. B.; Krummel, P. B.
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 124, Issue 545
  • DOI: 10.1002/qj.49712454507

A new Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) experiment designed for climate and chemistry models
journal, January 2015

  • Tilmes, S.; Mills, M. J.; Niemeier, U.
  • Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 8, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.5194/gmd-8-43-2015

Diffuse radiation in the Galaxy
journal, January 1941

  • Henyey, L. C.; Greenstein, J. L.
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 93
  • DOI: 10.1086/144246

Climate Change from 1850 to 2005 Simulated in CESM1(WACCM)
journal, October 2013

  • Marsh, Daniel R.; Mills, Michael J.; Kinnison, Douglas E.
  • Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 19
  • DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00558.1

Opacity distribution functions and absorption in Schumann-Runge bands of molecular oxygen
journal, March 1974


Optical properties of water in the near infrared*
journal, January 1974

  • Palmer, Kent F.; Williams, Dudley
  • Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 64, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1364/JOSA.64.001107

Measurement of the refractive indices of H_2SO_4–HNO_3–H_2O solutions to stratospheric temperatures
journal, January 2000

  • Krieger, Ulrich K.; Mössinger, Juliane C.; Luo, Beiping
  • Applied Optics, Vol. 39, Issue 21
  • DOI: 10.1364/AO.39.003691

Estimation of Errors in Two-Stream Approximations of the Solar Radiative Transfer Equation for Cloudy-Sky Conditions
journal, November 2015

  • Barker, Howard W.; Cole, Jason N. S.; Li, Jiangnan
  • Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 72, Issue 11
  • DOI: 10.1175/JAS-D-15-0033.1

Numerically stable algorithm for discrete-ordinate-method radiative transfer in multiple scattering and emitting layered media
journal, January 1988

  • Stamnes, Knut; Tsay, S-Chee; Wiscombe, Warren
  • Applied Optics, Vol. 27, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1364/AO.27.002502

Actinic radiation in the terrestrial atmosphere
journal, November 1997

  • Meier, R. R.; Anderson, G. P.; Cantrell, C. A.
  • Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Vol. 59, Issue 17
  • DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6826(97)00047-3

Implementation of the Fast-JX Photolysis scheme (v6.4) into the UKCA component of the MetUM chemistry-climate model (v7.3)
journal, January 2013

  • Telford, P. J.; Abraham, N. L.; Archibald, A. T.
  • Geoscientific Model Development, Vol. 6, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.5194/gmd-6-161-2013

Sensitivity of cirrus cloud albedo, bidirectional reflectance and optical thickness retrieval accuracy to ice particle shape
journal, July 1996

  • Mishchenko, Michael I.; Rossow, William B.; Macke, Andreas
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 101, Issue D12
  • DOI: 10.1029/96JD01155

Optical Constants of Water in the 200-nm to 200-μm Wavelength Region
journal, January 1973


Effect of clouds on photolysis and oxidants in the troposphere
journal, January 2003


Atmospheric radiative transfer modeling: a summary of the AER codes
journal, March 2005

  • Clough, S. A.; Shephard, M. W.; Mlawer, E. J.
  • Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 91, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2004.05.058

Global and regional decreases in tropospheric oxidants from photochemical effects of aerosols: PHOTOCHEMICAL EFFECTS OF AEROSOLS
journal, February 2003

  • Martin, Randall V.; Jacob, Daniel J.; Yantosca, Robert M.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 108, Issue D3
  • DOI: 10.1029/2002JD002622

Black carbon semi-direct effects on cloud cover: review and synthesis
journal, January 2010


Spectroscopic Study of Aqueous H 2 SO 4 at Different Temperatures and Compositions:  Variations in Dissociation and Optical Properties
journal, March 2003

  • Lund Myhre, Cathrine E.; Christensen, Daniel H.; Nicolaisen, Flemming M.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol. 107, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1021/jp026576n

Global atmospheric chemistry: Integrating over fractional cloud cover
journal, January 2007

  • Neu, Jessica L.; Prather, Michael J.; Penner, Joyce E.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 112, Issue D11
  • DOI: 10.1029/2006JD008007

On the Eddington Approximation
journal, June 1968

  • Huang, Su-Shu
  • The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 152
  • DOI: 10.1086/149600

A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance: FRONTIER
journal, January 2011

  • Kopp, Greg; Lean, Judith L.
  • Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1029/2010GL045777

Optical constants of water in the infrared
journal, April 1975

  • Downing, Harry D.; Williams, Dudley
  • Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 80, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1029/JC080i012p01656

Intercomparison of models representing direct shortwave radiative forcing by sulfate aerosols
journal, July 1998

  • Boucher, O.; Schwartz, S. E.; Ackerman, T. P.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 103, Issue D14
  • DOI: 10.1029/98JD00997

A fast, flexible, approximate technique for computing radiative transfer in inhomogeneous cloud fields: FAST, FLEXIBLE, APPROXIMATE RADIATIVE TRANSFER
journal, July 2003

  • Pincus, Robert; Barker, Howard W.; Morcrette, Jean-Jacques
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 108, Issue D13
  • DOI: 10.1029/2002JD003322

Backscattering peak of ice cloud particles
journal, January 2015


Clouds and Aerosols
book, June 2014


Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
book, June 2014


First extended validation of satellite microwave liquid water path with ship-based observations of marine low clouds: SATELLITE MW MARINE CLOUD VALIDATION
journal, June 2016

  • Painemal, David; Greenwald, Thomas; Cadeddu, Maria
  • Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 43, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069061

Radiative transfer through terrestrial atmosphere and ocean: Software package SCIATRAN
journal, January 2014

  • Rozanov, V. V.; Rozanov, A. V.; Kokhanovsky, A. A.
  • Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer, Vol. 133
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.jqsrt.2013.07.004

Photolysis rates in correlated overlapping cloud fields: Cloud-J 7.3c
journal, January 2015


On the radiative properties of ice clouds: Light scattering, remote sensing, and radiation parameterization
journal, November 2014


Sensitivity of stratospheric dynamics to uncertainty in O 3 production : SENSITIVITY OF STRAT. DYNAMICS TO UNCERTAINTY IN O
journal, August 2013

  • Hsu, Juno; Prather, Michael J.; Bergmann, Dan
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 118, Issue 16
  • DOI: 10.1002/jgrd.50689

Ultraviolet actinic flux in clear and cloudy atmospheres: model calculations and aircraft-based measurements
journal, January 2011

  • Palancar, G. G.; Shetter, R. E.; Hall, S. R.
  • Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 11, Issue 11
  • DOI: 10.5194/acp-11-5457-2011

A parameterization of ice cloud optical properties for climate models
journal, January 1992

  • Ebert, Elizabeth E.; Curry, Judith A.
  • Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, Issue D4
  • DOI: 10.1029/91JD02472

On the Correlated k -Distribution Method for Radiative Transfer in Nonhomogeneous Atmospheres
journal, November 1992


On the aerosol and cloud phase function expansion moments for radiative transfer simulations
journal, December 2015

  • Li, Jiangnan; Barker, Howard; Yang, Ping
  • Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 120, Issue 23
  • DOI: 10.1002/2015JD023632