Publication Abstracts
Pilewskie and L'Ecuyer 2024, submitted
, and T. L'Ecuyer, 2024: Convective cloud top radiative cooling decreases with increasing intensity. J. Climate, submitted.
It has been suggested that deep convective vertical intensity may increase in regions that are becoming increasingly moist in response to warming sea surface temperatures, with corresponding impacts on anvil cloud development and their top-of-atmosphere radiative effects. This work seeks to document the observed relationships between convective core intensity and cloud optical thickness/altitude that are the primary drivers of how high clouds fundamentally influence the Earth's radiative energy budget. We employ a database of "convective objects" generated from ten years of ATrain measurements to explore such relationships over the tropical ocean. In general, active convection has a negative net cloud radiative effect (CRE) over the tropical ocean regions. When sorting deep convective systems by a radar-based proxy for core intensity, the primary radiative response is an increase in longwave (LW) CRE as cloud top heights increase with intensity. Meanwhile, thin cirrus increases at the expense of thicker anvil cloud, which weakens the shortwave (SW) CRE for systems composed of primarily thin cloud. This offsets enhanced SW CRE in thicker cloud systems driving the ensemble of convective systems towards a more neutral net radiative effect at the top of the atmosphere as intensity increases.
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BibTeX Citation
@unpublished{pi04100o, author={Pilewskie, J. and L'Ecuyer, T.}, title={Convective cloud top radiative cooling decreases with increasing intensity}, year={2024}, journal={Journal of Climate}, note={Manuscript submitted for publication} }
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RIS Citation
TY - UNPB ID - pi04100o AU - Pilewskie, J. AU - L'Ecuyer, T. PY - 2024 TI - Convective cloud top radiative cooling decreases with increasing intensity JA - J. Climate JO - Journal of Climate ER -
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