A parametrization of solar energy disposition in the climate system

The effects of sea‐ice and land‐snow concentrations on planetary albedo from the earth radiation budget experiment

“…Qu and Hall (2005) found that, although clouds significantly diminish the surface contribution to the TOA albedo in the polar regions, the variability of the TOA albedo is still controlled by the surface albedo. Wang et al (2004) proposed a parametrization of the planetary albedo and solar energy disposition in the atmosphere for climate models. While their calculated solar energy disposition was in agreement with observations over most of the world, they emphasize the biases in both data and simulations found in the polar regions.…”

Correspondence: Reply to the comment of weaver and Eby on the Paper “a parametrization of solar energy disposition in the climate system” (Wang et al., 2004)

“…We agree that some statements in Wang et al (2004) are inaccurate, and we apologize for the confusion that this may have caused. In order to clarify our description of the UVic model as in Weaver et al (2001), we note the following.…”

“…In the comment of Weaver and Eby on Wang et al (2004), it is pointed out that the description in Wang et al (2004) of the treatment of albedo processes in the University of Victoria (UVic) model is incorrect. We agree that some statements in Wang et al (2004) are inaccurate, and we apologize for the confusion that this may have caused.…”

“…Since the earlier versions of the UVic model (prior to versions 2.6 and 2.7) have no surface albedo term in the calculation of solar insolation absorbed by the surface (for example, see Eq. (24) of Weaver et al (2001) for the heat flux from the atmosphere to the sea ice), we made the statement in Wang et al (2004) that 'the ice-albedo feedback is not explicitly taken into account in their model.' In place of this statement, we should have stated that the surface albedo does not explicitly appear in their model, where the surface albedo is defined in Eq.…”

“…(1) in the comment of Weaver and Eby and Eq. (5) in Wang et al (2004)) and hence this planetary albedo change (of 0.18 in Weaver et al (2001)) due to the presence of snow or ice cannot be a constant.…”