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Title: FAT or FiTT: Are Anvil Clouds or the Tropopause Temperature Invariant?

Journal Article · · Geophysical Research Letters
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
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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.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; DGE1106400; 1535746
OSTI ID:
1513799
Journal Information:
Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 46, Issue 3; ISSN 0094-8276
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 32 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (3)

Convection and Climate: What Have We Learned from Simple Models and Simplified Settings? journal June 2019
Climatology Explains Intermodel Spread in Tropical Upper Tropospheric Cloud and Relative Humidity Response to Greenhouse Warming journal November 2019
The Response of Tropical Organized Convection to El Niño Warming journal August 2019

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