Judicious Use of Satellite-Derived Cloud Ice and Liquid Water Content for the Evaluation and Improvement of Clouds and Radiation in GCMs

Duane E. Waliser

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology



Abstract

Present-day shortcomings in the representation of clouds in general circulation models (GCMs) lead to errors in weather and climate forecasts as well as account for a source of uncertainty in climate change projections.  An ongoing challenge in rectifying these shortcomings has been the availability of adequate, high-quality, global observations that discriminate and provide vertical structure of liquid and ice clouds, and related precipitating hydrometeors. In addition, the inadequacy of the modeled physics and the often-disjointed nature between model representation and the characteristics of the retrieved/observed values have hampered GCM development and validation efforts from making effective use of the measurements that have been available.  Thus, even though parameterizations in GCMs accounting for cloud ice and liquid processes have, in some cases, become more sophisticated in recent years, this development has largely occurred independently of the global scale measurements.  With the relatively recent addition of satellite-derived products (e.g., CloudSat, MLS), there are now considerably more resources with new and unique capabilities to evaluate GCMs.  In this presentation, I will illustrate the shortcomings evident in model representations of cloud ice and liquid through a comparison of the simulations assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, briefly discuss the range of global observational resources that are available, and describe the essential components of the model parameterizations that characterize their ice and liquid ?clouds? and related fields.  Using this information as background, I will discuss some of the main considerations and cautions that must be taken into account in making model-data comparisons related to clouds from these satellite fields, illustrate present progress and uncertainties in applying these data ? specifically judiciously filtered versions CloudSat - to model diagnosis, including the impacts of precipitating hydrometeors (which are often ignored in GCMs) on the tropical radiation budget.