Incorporating the Effects of 3D Radiative Transfer in the Presence of Clouds into Two-Stream Multilayer Radiation Schemes

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a new method for representing the important effects of horizontal radiation transport through cloud sides in two-stream radiation schemes. Ordinarily, the radiative transfer equations are discretized separately for the clear and cloudy regions within each model level, but here terms are introduced that represent the exchange of radiation laterally between regions and the resulting coupled equations are solved for each layer. This approach may be taken with both the direct incoming shortwave radiation, which is governed by Beer’s law, and the diffuse shortwave and longwave radiation, governed by the two-stream equations. The rate of lateral exchange is determined by the area of cloud “edge.” The validity of the method is demonstrated by comparing with rigorous 3D radiative transfer calculations in the literature for two cloud types in which the 3D effect is strong, specifically cumulus and aircraft contrails. The 3D effect on shortwave cloud radiative forcing varies between around −25% and around +100%, depending on solar zenith angle. Even with an otherwise very simplistic representation of the cloud, the new scheme exhibits good agreement with the rigorous calculations in the shortwave, opening the way for efficient yet accurate representation of this important effect in climate models.