Abstract
Abstract The GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) GCM (general circulation model) predicts stratiform and convective cloud cover and optical thickness at nine atmospheric levels in horizontal grid boxes of 4° lat × 5° long. Until now, the radiative fluxes were calculated once per grid box, assuming clear sky or a complete cloud cover. Here, a refinement of the radiative flux calculation is explored by introducing a horizontal subgrid cloud overlap scheme in which cloud blocks are formed by adjacent cloud layers using maximum overlap. Different cloud blocks are separated by an atmospheric level of clear sky and are assumed to overlap randomly inside the grid box. This subgrid cloud structure allows determination of the occurrence probabilities of columns with different vertical structures inside each horizontal grid box. Then, radiative fluxes are calculated for each of these columns. The radiative fluxes of each horizontal grid box are obtained as the occurrence probability weighted sum of the colum...
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