Vertical structure of cloud radiative heating in the tropics: confronting the EC-Earth v3.3.1/3P model with satellite observations

Johansson, Erik; Devasthale, Abhay; Tjernström, Michael; Ekman, Annica M. L.; Wyser, Klaus; L'Ecuyer, Tristan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4087-2021

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4087-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-4087-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Model evaluation paper

|

01 Jul 2021

Model evaluation paper |

| 01 Jul 2021

Vertical structure of cloud radiative heating in the tropics: confronting the EC-Earth v3.3.1/3P model with satellite observations

Erik Johansson, Abhay Devasthale, Michael Tjernström, Annica M. L. Ekman, Klaus Wyser, and Tristan L'Ecuyer

Data sets

Data processing center CloudSat http://www.cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu

Vertical cloud radiative heating from the EC-Earth3 v3.3.1 model Erik Johansson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3981154

Vertical cloud radiative heating from the EC-Earth3 PRIMAVERA standard-resolution model Erik Johansson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3947700

Vertical cloud radiative heating from the EC-Earth3 PRIMAVERA high-resolution model part 1 (of 2) Erik Johansson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3958826

Vertical cloud radiative heating from the EC-Earth3 PRIMAVERA high-resolution model part 2 (of 2) Erik Johansson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3960087

Model code and software

Vertical cloud radiative heating: Python code Erik Johansson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4734468

Short summary

Understanding the coupling of clouds to large-scale circulation is a grand challenge for the climate community. Cloud radiative heating (CRH) is a key parameter in this coupling and is therefore essential to model realistically. We, therefore, evaluate a climate model against satellite observations. Our findings indicate good agreement in the seasonal pattern of CRH even if the magnitude differs. We also find that increasing the horizontal resolution in the model has little effect on the CRH.