Thermodynamic control of anvil cloud amount
Abstract
General circulation models show that as the surface temperature increases, the convective anvil clouds shrink. By analyzing radiative–convective equilibrium simulations, our work shows that this behavior is rooted in basic energetic and thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere: As the climate warms, the clouds rise and remain at nearly the same temperature, but find themselves in a more stable atmosphere; this enhanced stability reduces the convective outflow in the upper troposphere and decreases the anvil cloud fraction. By warming the troposphere and increasing the upper-tropospheric stability, the clustering of deep convection also reduces the convective outflow and the anvil cloud fraction. When clouds are radiatively active, this robust coupling between temperature, high clouds, and circulation exerts a positive feedback on convective aggregation and favors the maintenance of strongly aggregated atmospheric states at high temperatures. This stability iris mechanism likely contributes to the narrowing of rainy areas as the climate warms. Whether or not it influences climate sensitivity requires further investigation.
- Authors:
-
[5]
- Paris-Sorbonne and Pierre-and-Marie Curie (UPMC) Univ., Paris (France). Dynamic Meteorology Lab. (LMD)/Inst. Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL)
- Max-Planck Inst. for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
- Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory
- National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States). Climate and Global Dynamics Lab.
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Univ. Corp. for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Boulder, Co (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Earth and Environmental Systems Science Division; National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Strasbourg (France); National Research Agency (ANR); Max-Planck Society; German Research Foundation (DFG)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1262439
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1438340
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FC02-97ER62402; ANR-10-LABX-0018; VO 1765/3-1
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Volume: 113 Journal Issue: 32; Journal ID: ISSN 0027-8424
- Publisher:
- National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; anvil cloud; cloud feedback; convective aggregation; large-scale circulation; climate sensitivity
Citation Formats
Bony, Sandrine, Stevens, Bjorn, Coppin, David, Becker, Tobias, Reed, Kevin A., Voigt, Aiko, and Medeiros, Brian. Thermodynamic control of anvil cloud amount. United States: N. p., 2016.
Web. doi:10.1073/pnas.1601472113.
Bony, Sandrine, Stevens, Bjorn, Coppin, David, Becker, Tobias, Reed, Kevin A., Voigt, Aiko, & Medeiros, Brian. Thermodynamic control of anvil cloud amount. United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601472113
Bony, Sandrine, Stevens, Bjorn, Coppin, David, Becker, Tobias, Reed, Kevin A., Voigt, Aiko, and Medeiros, Brian. Wed .
"Thermodynamic control of anvil cloud amount". United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601472113.
@article{osti_1262439,
title = {Thermodynamic control of anvil cloud amount},
author = {Bony, Sandrine and Stevens, Bjorn and Coppin, David and Becker, Tobias and Reed, Kevin A. and Voigt, Aiko and Medeiros, Brian},
abstractNote = {General circulation models show that as the surface temperature increases, the convective anvil clouds shrink. By analyzing radiative–convective equilibrium simulations, our work shows that this behavior is rooted in basic energetic and thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere: As the climate warms, the clouds rise and remain at nearly the same temperature, but find themselves in a more stable atmosphere; this enhanced stability reduces the convective outflow in the upper troposphere and decreases the anvil cloud fraction. By warming the troposphere and increasing the upper-tropospheric stability, the clustering of deep convection also reduces the convective outflow and the anvil cloud fraction. When clouds are radiatively active, this robust coupling between temperature, high clouds, and circulation exerts a positive feedback on convective aggregation and favors the maintenance of strongly aggregated atmospheric states at high temperatures. This stability iris mechanism likely contributes to the narrowing of rainy areas as the climate warms. Whether or not it influences climate sensitivity requires further investigation.},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1601472113},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
number = 32,
volume = 113,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Jul 13 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Wed Jul 13 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601472113
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601472113
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 154 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Insights into Cloud-Top Height and Dynamics from the Seasonal Cycle of Cloud-Top Heights Observed by MISR in the West Pacific Region
journal, January 2010
- Chae, Jung Hyo; Sherwood, Steven C.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 67, Issue 1
Testing the Role of Radiation in Determining Tropical Cloud-Top Temperature
journal, September 2012
- Harrop, Bryce E.; Hartmann, Dennis L.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 25, Issue 17
What favors convective aggregation and why?: WHAT FAVORS CONVECTIVE AGGREGATION
journal, July 2015
- Muller, Caroline; Bony, Sandrine
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 42, Issue 13
Climate and climate change in a radiative-convective equilibrium version of ECHAM6: RCE WITH ECHAM6
journal, January 2013
- Popke, D.; Stevens, B.; Voigt, A.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Climate change projections using the IPSL-CM5 Earth System Model: from CMIP3 to CMIP5
journal, February 2013
- Dufresne, J. -L.; Foujols, M. -A.; Denvil, S.
- Climate Dynamics, Vol. 40, Issue 9-10
Response of an atmospheric general circulation model to radiative forcing of tropical clouds
journal, January 1994
- Sherwood, Steven C.; Ramanathan, V.; Barnett, Tim P.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 99, Issue D10
Cloud-radiation feedback to climate
journal, October 1980
- Paltridge, G. W.
- Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 106, Issue 450
Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared Iris?
journal, March 2001
- Lindzen, Richard S.; Chou, Ming-Dah; Hou, Arthur Y.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 82, Issue 3
Testing the Fixed Anvil Temperature Hypothesis in a Cloud-Resolving Model
journal, May 2007
- Kuang, Zhiming; Hartmann, Dennis L.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 20, Issue 10
The response of a general circulation model to cloud longwave radiative forcing. I: Introduction and initial experiments
journal, July 1988
- Slingo, A.; Slingo, J. M.
- Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 114, Issue 482
Physical mechanisms controlling self-aggregation of convection in idealized numerical modeling simulations: SELF-AGGREGATION MECHANISMS
journal, February 2014
- Wing, Allison A.; Emanuel, Kerry A.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 1
CGILS: Results from the first phase of an international project to understand the physical mechanisms of low cloud feedbacks in single column models: CGILS Results On Low Cloud Feedback
journal, December 2013
- Zhang, Minghua; Bretherton, Christopher S.; Blossey, Peter N.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 5, Issue 4
An important constraint on tropical cloud - climate feedback: TROPICAL CLOUD-CLIMATE FEEDBACK
journal, October 2002
- Hartmann, Dennis L.; Larson, Kristin
- Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 29, Issue 20
An Overview of CMIP5 and the Experiment Design
journal, April 2012
- Taylor, Karl E.; Stouffer, Ronald J.; Meehl, Gerald A.
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 93, Issue 4
Does convective aggregation need to be represented in cumulus parameterizations?: MESOSCALE CONVECTIVE AGGREGATION
journal, October 2013
- Tobin, Isabelle; Bony, Sandrine; Holloway, Chris E.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 5, Issue 4
Sensitivity of Tropical Convection to Sea Surface Temperature in the Absence of Large-Scale Flow
journal, February 1999
- Tompkins, Adrian M.; Craig, George C.
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 12, Issue 2
Thermostats, Radiator Fins, and the Local Runaway Greenhouse
journal, May 1995
- Pierrehumbert, R. T.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 52, Issue 10
Circulation response to warming shaped by radiative changes of clouds and water vapour
journal, January 2015
- Voigt, Aiko; Shaw, Tiffany A.
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 8, Issue 2
The observed sensitivity of high clouds to mean surface temperature anomalies in the tropics: TEMPERATURE SENSITIVITY OF HIGH CLOUDS
journal, December 2011
- Zelinka, Mark D.; Hartmann, Dennis L.
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 116, Issue D23
Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing
journal, January 2014
- Sherwood, Steven C.; Bony, Sandrine; Dufresne, Jean-Louis
- Nature, Vol. 505, Issue 7481
Why is longwave cloud feedback positive?
journal, January 2010
- Zelinka, Mark D.; Hartmann, Dennis L.
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 115, Issue D16
Self-aggregation of convection in long channel geometry: Self-Aggregation in Channel Geometry
journal, September 2015
- Wing, Allison A.; Cronin, Timothy W.
- Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 142, Issue 694
An Energy-Balance Analysis of Deep Convective Self-Aggregation above Uniform SST
journal, December 2005
- Bretherton, Christopher S.; Blossey, Peter N.; Khairoutdinov, Marat
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 62, Issue 12
Physical mechanisms controlling the initiation of convective self-aggregation in a General Circulation Model: MECHANISMS OF INITIATION OF AGGREGATION
journal, December 2015
- Coppin, David; Bony, Sandrine
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 7, Issue 4
The effect of atmospheric radiative heating by clouds on the Madden-Julian Oscillation: CLOUD-RADIATIVE EFFECTS ON THE MJO
journal, June 2015
- Crueger, Traute; Stevens, Bjorn
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 7, Issue 2
Rainfall and Radiative Heating Rates from TOGA COARE Atmospheric Budgets
journal, May 2000
- Johnson, Richard H.; Ciesielski, Paul E.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 57, Issue 10
Global-scale convective aggregation: Implications for the Madden-Julian Oscillation: GLOBAL-SCALE CONVECTIVE AGGREGATION
journal, October 2015
- Arnold, Nathan P.; Randall, David A.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 7, Issue 4
Rotating radiative-convective equilibrium simulated by a cloud-resolving model: ROTATING RCE
journal, December 2013
- Khairoutdinov, Marat; Emanuel, Kerry
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 5, Issue 4
Radiative Impacts of Free-Tropospheric Clouds on the Properties of Marine Stratocumulus
journal, October 2013
- Christensen, Matthew W.; Carrió, Gustavo G.; Stephens, Graeme L.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 70, Issue 10
Atmospheric component of the MPI-M Earth System Model: ECHAM6: ECHAM6
journal, April 2013
- Stevens, Bjorn; Giorgetta, Marco; Esch, Monika
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 5, Issue 2
Clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity
journal, March 2015
- Bony, Sandrine; Stevens, Bjorn; Frierson, Dargan M. W.
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 8, Issue 4
Interactions among Radiation, Convection, and Large-Scale Dynamics in a General Circulation Model
journal, July 1989
- Randall, David A.; Dazlich, Donald A.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 46, Issue 13
Radiative-convective instability: RADIATIVE-CONVECTIVE INSTABILITY
journal, February 2014
- Emanuel, Kerry; Wing, Allison A.; Vincent, Emmanuel M.
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Missing iris effect as a possible cause of muted hydrological change and high climate sensitivity in models
journal, April 2015
- Mauritsen, Thorsten; Stevens, Bjorn
- Nature Geoscience, Vol. 8, Issue 5
Radiative-Convective Equilibrium with Explicit Two-Dimensional Moist Convection
journal, December 1993
- Held, Isaac M.; Hemler, Richard S.; Ramaswamy, V.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 50, Issue 23
Marine Boundary Layer Cloud Feedbacks in a Constant Relative Humidity Atmosphere
journal, August 2012
- Rieck, Malte; Nuijens, Louise; Stevens, Bjorn
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 69, Issue 8
Observational Evidence for Relationships between the Degree of Aggregation of Deep Convection, Water Vapor, Surface Fluxes, and Radiation
journal, October 2012
- Tobin, Isabelle; Bony, Sandrine; Roca, Remy
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 25, Issue 20
Global Radiative–Convective Equilibrium in the Community Atmosphere Model, Version 5
journal, May 2015
- Reed, Kevin A.; Medeiros, Brian; Bacmeister, Julio T.
- Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Vol. 72, Issue 5