PNNL

Abstract

The spectral dependence of the radiative horizontal transport (the horizontal transport of radiative energy) E and its effect on the accuracy of spectral and broadband absorption retrieval in the near-infrared (IR) wavelength range was investigated using a large-eddy simulation (LES) cloud model with explicit microphysics and a three-dimensional Monte Carlo radiative transfer model. Two typical types of marine clouds representing inhomogeneous overcast and broken stratocumulus clouds have been simulated. We demonstrate that (i) the basic statistics (e.g., variance and correlation function) of the horizontal transport are wavelength dependent and (ii) the estimates of spectral and broadband absorption with a given accuracy (e.g., rmse ~4%) may require the use of different spatial resolutions.