FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?
Abstract
The Fixed Anvil Temperature (FAT) hypothesis proposes that upper tropospheric cloud fraction peaks at a special isotherm that is independent of surface temperature. It has been argued that a FAT should result from simple ingredients: Clausius-Clapeyron, longwave emission from water vapor, and tropospheric energy and mass balance. Here the first cloud-resolving simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium designed to contain only these basic ingredients are presented. This setup does not produce a FAT: the anvil temperature varies by about 40% of the surface temperature range. However, the tropopause temperature varies by only 4% of the surface temperature range, which supports the existence of a Fixed Tropopause Temperature (FiTT). Lastly, in full-complexity radiative-convective equilibrium simulations, the spread in anvil temperature is smaller by about a factor of 2, but the tropopause temperature remains more invariant than the anvil temperature by an order of magnitude. In other words, our simulations have a FiTT, not a FAT.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[3]
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1513799
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; DGE1106400; 1535746
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 46; Journal Issue: 3; Journal ID: ISSN 0094-8276
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Citation Formats
Seeley, Jacob T., Jeevanjee, Nadir, and Romps, David M. FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?. United States: N. p., 2019.
Web. doi:10.1029/2018gl080096.
Seeley, Jacob T., Jeevanjee, Nadir, & Romps, David M. FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?. United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl080096
Seeley, Jacob T., Jeevanjee, Nadir, and Romps, David M. Mon .
"FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?". United States. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018gl080096. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1513799.
@article{osti_1513799,
title = {FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?},
author = {Seeley, Jacob T. and Jeevanjee, Nadir and Romps, David M.},
abstractNote = {The Fixed Anvil Temperature (FAT) hypothesis proposes that upper tropospheric cloud fraction peaks at a special isotherm that is independent of surface temperature. It has been argued that a FAT should result from simple ingredients: Clausius-Clapeyron, longwave emission from water vapor, and tropospheric energy and mass balance. Here the first cloud-resolving simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium designed to contain only these basic ingredients are presented. This setup does not produce a FAT: the anvil temperature varies by about 40% of the surface temperature range. However, the tropopause temperature varies by only 4% of the surface temperature range, which supports the existence of a Fixed Tropopause Temperature (FiTT). Lastly, in full-complexity radiative-convective equilibrium simulations, the spread in anvil temperature is smaller by about a factor of 2, but the tropopause temperature remains more invariant than the anvil temperature by an order of magnitude. In other words, our simulations have a FiTT, not a FAT.},
doi = {10.1029/2018gl080096},
journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
number = 3,
volume = 46,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {2}
}
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