A test of the ability of current bulk optical models to represent the radiative properties of cirrus cloud across the mid- and far-infrared

Bantges, R.; Brindley, Helen E.; Murray, J. E.; Russell, Jill; Fox, Cathryn; Fox, Stuart; Harlow, Chawn; O’Shea, Sebastian; Bower, Keith; Baum, Bryan A.; Yang, Ping; Oetjen, H.; Pickering, Juliet C.

doi:10.5194/acp-20-12889-2020

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…However, computed scattering properties require ice crystal habit and size distribution assumptions that introduce uncertainty in relating radiances to particle size (Cooper et al, 2006). Prior efforts to evaluate bulk ice cloud scattering properties through the FIR using in situ observations are limited to select case studies (Cox et al, 2010;Bantges et al, 2010) so some refinement of existing particle optical properties may be required.…”

Section: Driversmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment: A New Perspective on Polar Longwave Energy Exchanges

L’Ecuyer

Drouin

Anheuser

et al. 2021

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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The Earth’s climate is strongly influenced by energy deficits at the poles that emit more thermal energy than they receive from the sun. Energy exchanges between the surface and atmosphere influence the local environment while heat transport from lower latitudes drives midlatitude atmospheric and oceanic circulations. In the Arctic, in particular, local energy imbalances induce strong seasonality in surface-atmosphere heat exchanges and an acute sensitivity to forced climate variations. Despite these important local and global influences, the largest contributions to the polar atmospheric and surface energy budgets have not been fully characterized. The spectral variation of far-infrared radiation that makes up 60% of polar thermal emission has never been systematically measured impeding progress toward consensus in predicted rates of Arctic warming, sea ice decline, and ice sheet melt.Enabled by recent advances in sensor miniaturization and CubeSat technology, the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) mission will document, for the first time, the spectral, spatial, and temporal variations of polar far-infrared emission. Selected under NASA’s Earth Ventures Instrument (EVI) program, PREFIRE will utilize new light weight, low-power, ambient temperature detectors capable of measuring at wavelengths up to 50 micrometers to quantify Earth’s far-infrared spectrum. Estimates of spectral surface emissivity, water vapor, cloud properties, and the atmospheric greenhouse effect derived from these measurements offer the potential to advance our understanding of the factors that modulate thermal fluxes in the cold, dry conditions characteristic of the polar regions.

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Section: Driversmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment: A New Perspective on Polar Longwave Energy Exchanges

L’Ecuyer

Drouin

Anheuser

et al. 2021

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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“…TAFTS is a Martin‐Puplett polarizing interferometer (Martin & Puplett, 1969) covering the spectral range of 80–600 cm −1 and has been deployed in numerous airborne field campaigns (e.g., Bantges et al, 2020; Cox et al, 2010; Green et al, 2012). TAFTS uses two sets of liquid helium‐cooled detectors.…”

Section: The Radiation Instrumentation Greenland Flight and Ancillamentioning

confidence: 99%

Retrievals of High‐Latitude Surface Emissivity Across the Infrared From High‐Altitude Aircraft Flights

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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We present retrievals of infrared spectral surface emissivities spanning the far infrared and mid-infrared from aircraft observations over Greenland, taken at an altitude of 9.2 km above sea level. We describe the flight campaign, available measurements, and the retrieval method. The principal barriers to reducing uncertainty in the emissivity retrievals are found to be instrumental noise and our ability to simultaneously retrieve the underlying surface temperature. However, our results indicate that using the instrumentation available to us it is possible to retrieve emissivities from altitude with an uncertainty of~0.02 or better across much of the infrared. They confirm that the far-infrared emissivity of snow and ice surfaces can depart substantially from unity, reaching values as low as 0.9 between 400 and 450 cm −1. They also show good consistency with retrievals from the same flight made from near-surface observations giving confidence in the methodology used and the results obtained for this more challenging viewing configuration. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that far-infrared surface emissivity has been retrieved from altitude and demonstrates that the methodology has the potential to be extended to planned satellite far-infrared missions.

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“…Yi et al 40 , 41 also applied the C6 ice and liquid water cloud models in the broadband radiative transfer models, and achieved better simulation performances in deriving the top of the atmosphere (TOA) cloud radiative effect (CRE) in comparison with Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) observations. Although some studies 42 , 43 found that the C6 ice cloud model exhibited inconsistent performances in the mid and far infrared regions, it generally provided reasonable results for broadband simulations. Apparently, the present status of implementing various kinds of ice cloud optical property parameterizations in remote sensing and modeling studies could induce large uncertainties in the applications 32 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Diverse cloud radiative effects and global surface temperature simulations induced by different ice cloud optical property parameterizations

2022

Sci Rep

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The representation of ice cloud optical properties in climate models has long been a difficult problem. Very different ice cloud optical property parameterization schemes developed based on very different assumptions of ice particle shape habits, particle size distributions, and surface roughness conditions, are used in various models. It is not clear as to how simulated climate variables are affected by the ice cloud optical property parameterizations. A total of five ice cloud optical property parameterization schemes, including three based on the ice habit mixtures suitable for general ice clouds, mid-latitude synoptic ice clouds, and tropical deep convective ice clouds, and the other two based on single ice habits (smooth hexagonal column and severely roughened column aggregate), are developed under a same framework and are implemented in the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmospheric Model version 5. A series of atmosphere-only climate simulations are carried out for each of the five cases with different ice parameterizations. The differences in the simulated top of the atmosphere shortwave and longwave cloud radiative effects (CREs) are evaluated, and the global averaged net CRE differences among different cases range from − 1.93 to 1.03 Wm−2. The corresponding changes in simulated surface temperature are found to be most prominent on continental regions which amount to several degrees in Kelvin. Our results indicate the importance of choosing a reasonable ice cloud optical property parameterization in climate simulations.

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A test of the ability of current bulk optical models to represent the radiative properties of cirrus cloud across the mid- and far-infrared

Cited by 12 publications

References 61 publications

The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment: A New Perspective on Polar Longwave Energy Exchanges

The Polar Radiant Energy in the Far Infrared Experiment: A New Perspective on Polar Longwave Energy Exchanges

Retrievals of High‐Latitude Surface Emissivity Across the Infrared From High‐Altitude Aircraft Flights

Diverse cloud radiative effects and global surface temperature simulations induced by different ice cloud optical property parameterizations

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