Study of longwave radiative transfer in stratocumulus clouds by using bin optical properties and bin microphysics scheme

Abstract

Infrared radiative cooling at the cloud top is the major driving force for stratocumulus-topped boundary layer turbulence and the major source of buoyancy within a convective mixed layer. However, there is still large uncertainty about the rate of longwave cooling at the cloud top in recent numerical models. Radiative transfer calculations within stratocumulus clouds can be further improved by using bin scheme in the calculation of longwave extinction coefficients.A method to calculate bin optical properties was developed and was implemented in the RRTM LW radiative transfer model. This bin-type radiation scheme allows us more accurate calculation of the optical properties of clouds, because it does not need any arbitrary assumption for the size distribution of the hydrometeors. The number concentrations and mixing ratios in 36 size-bins provided by bin microphysical scheme are used for calculation of the extinction coefficient. In this paper results of this new scheme were compared to that of one-moment and two-moment bulk radiation schemes where the size distributions were supposed to follow a gamma-function. It was found that the application of the two-moment bulk scheme had no advantage against the one-moment bulk scheme in simulation of radiation profiles, if radiation feedback on cloud processes was not taken into account. Although the gamma function used by bulk schemes fitted relatively well to the size distribution of the water drops calculated by the bin scheme, the longwave radiation fluxes calculated by the two schemes (bulk vs. bin) were significantly different. The bin radiation scheme gave at least 50% larger warming rates both at the cloud base and at the cloud top than the bulk schemes did. The cooling/warming occurred in a thinner vertical layer in the case of the bin scheme than in the case of bulk schemes. The shape of the net radiation profile strongly depended on the CCN concentration. Continental clouds were found to have horizontally less varying value and vertically thinner region of cloud top cooling than maritime clouds.Compared with the observations the bulk radiation schemes failed to simulate the cloud base warming, while the bin radiation scheme reproduced well the observed cloud base warming. Considering the cloud top cooling the bin scheme overestimated the observed values, but agreed well with the results of other detailed radiation models. This difference might be explained by uncertainties about the vertical extent of the layer where divergence of the net radiation profile was large.