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Reference Atmosphere + Low Clouds

To the reference atmosphere we added a layer of broken clouds to the lowest layer (950-1000 mb). We used the suggested values of 0.25 for the albedo and 0.8 for the absorptivity of terrestrial radiation.

The result, as shown with the blue plot below, was considerable at all levels. The surface temperature dropped 11.68o to a high of 60.79o, still too warm. The temperature in level 20 dropped 9.55o, and the temperature in higher levels dropped more than 15o.

Both the increased albedo and increased absorptivity of terrestrial radiation decreased temperatures. The albedo caused less solar radiation to reach the surface and the absorptivity caused less of the terrestrial long-wave IR radiation to reach higher levels.

Low Clouds

Number of layers

N = 20

Radiative Parameters

Atmosphere:

aT = 0.15
aS = 0.0
α   = 0.003

Layer 20 (975 mb):

aT = 0.8
α   = 0.25

Surface:

&alpha = 0.05

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clouds.html 5/22/08 Victor Frank