PNNL

Abstract

One of the goals of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program was to provide long-term observations for evaluation of cloud and radiation treatment in global climate models. Unfortunately, traditional parametric approach of diagnosing cloud and radiation properties from large-scale model fields is not well suited for comparison with observed time series at selected locations. A recently emerging approach called the multi-scale modeling framework (MMF) has shown promise to bridge the gap. MMF consists of a two-dimensional cloud system resolving model (CSRM) embedded into each CAM grid column of the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM), thereby computing cloud properties at a scale that is more consistent with observations. Because the approach is computationally expensive only limited simulations have been carried out. In this presentation, we will present a comparison of data from two ARM sites, one at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) in Oklahoma and one at Nauru island in the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) region, with output from both CAM and MMF. Two sets of one year long simulations are considered: one using climatological sea surface temperatures (SST) and another using 1999 SST. Each set includes a run with MMF as well as CAM run with traditional or standard cloud and radiation treatment. Time series of cloud fraction, precipitation intensity, and downwelling solar radiation flux at the surface are statistically analyzed. For the TWP site, nearly all parameters of frequency distributions of these variables from MMF run are shown to be more consistent with observation than those from CAM run. For the SGP, the improvements are marginal.