DOI: 10.1007/s00382-012-1342-z
Scopus记录号: 2-s2.0-84869507394
论文题名: A treatment for the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition in GCMs
作者: Xiao H. ; Wu C.-M. ; Mechoso C.R. ; Ma H.-Y.
刊名: Climate Dynamics
ISSN: 9307575
出版年: 2012
卷: 39, 期: 12 起始页码: 3075
结束页码: 3089
语种: 英语
英文关键词: Boundary layer
; General circulation models
; Marine low clouds
; Stratocumulus
; Stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition
英文摘要: Numerical models of climate have great difficulties with the simulation of marine low clouds in the subtropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. It has been especially difficult to reproduce the observed geographical distributions of the different cloud regimes in those regions. The present study discusses mechanisms proposed in previous works for changing one regime into another. One criterion is based on the theory of stratocumulus destruction through cloud top entrainment instability due to buoyancy reversal-situations in which the mixture of two air parcels becomes denser than either of the original parcels due to evaporation of cloud water. Another criterion is based on the existence of decoupling in the boundary layer. When decoupled, the stratocumulus regime changes to another in which these clouds can still exist together with cumulus. In a LES study, the authors have suggested that a combination of those two criteria can be used to diagnose whether, at a location, the cloud regime corresponds to a well-mixed stratocumulus regime, a shallow cumulus regime, or to a transitional regime where the boundary layer is decoupled. The concept is tested in the framework of an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM). It is found that several outstanding features of disagreement between simulation and observation can be interpreted as misrepresentations of the cloud regimes by the GCM. A novel criterion for switching among regimes is proposed to alleviate the effects of these misrepresentations. © 2012 Springer-Verlag. Citation statistics:
资源类型: 期刊论文
标识符: http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/55131
Appears in Collections: 过去全球变化的重建
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作者单位: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States; Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 106, Taiwan; Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, United States
Recommended Citation:
Xiao H.,Wu C.-M.,Mechoso C.R.,et al. A treatment for the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition in GCMs[J]. Climate Dynamics,2012-01-01,39(12)