Articles | Volume 19, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-3875-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-3875-2026
Development and technical paper
 | 
13 May 2026
Development and technical paper |  | 13 May 2026

Representing subgrid-scale cloud effects in a radiation parameterization using machine learning: MLe-radiation v1.0

Katharina Hafner, Sara Shamekh, Guillaume Bertoli, Axel Lauer, Robert Pincus, Julien Savre, and Veronika Eyring

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This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS).
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Cited articles

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Bony, S., Stevens, B., Frierson, D. M. W., Jakob, C., Kageyama, M., Pincus, R., Shepherd, T. G., Sherwood, S. C., Siebesma, A. P., Sobel, A. H., Watanabe, M., and Webb, M. J.: Clouds, circulation and climate sensitivity, Nat. Geosci., 8, 261–268, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2398, 2015. a, b
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Most climate models cannot resolve clouds and cloud-radiation interactions at coarse horizontal resolutions of about 100 km, which introduces uncertainties. High-resolution models resolve clouds better but are expensive to run. We use short high-resolution simulations and artificial intelligence to learn the cloud-radiation interactions without making any assumptions about the small scales. We propose a new method that significantly reduces cloud related errors.
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