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The ‘too few, too bright’ tropical low-cloud problem in CMIP5 models.
Open accessAbstract
Previous generations of climate models have been shown to under‐estimate the occurrence of tropical low‐level clouds and to over‐estimate their radiative effects. This study analyzes outputs from multiple climate models participating in the Fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) using the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project Observations Simulator Package (COSP), and compares them with different satellite data sets. Those include CALIPSO lidar observations, PARASOL mono‐directional reflectances and CERES radiative fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. We show that current state‐of‐the‐art climate models predict overly bright low‐clouds, even for a correct low‐cloud cover. The impact of these biases on the Earth' radiation budget, however, is reduced by compensating errors. Those include the tendency of models to under‐estimate the low‐cloud cover and to over‐estimate the occurrence of mid‐ and high‐clouds above low‐clouds. Finally, we show that models poorly represent the dependence of the vertical structure of low‐clouds on large‐scale environmental conditions. The implications of this ‘too few, too bright low‐cloud problem’ for climate sensitivity and model development are discussed.
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“Even when the CMIP surface radiative forcing is correct, the cloud cover is still typically too low (de Szoeke et al., 2012), likely due to an underestimation of optically thin stratiform clouds (Nam et al., 2012;Zuidema et al., 2012;Delgadillo et al., 2018;Wood et al., 2018).”
From The tropical atlantic observing system (2019) · cites this paper as Nam et al., 2012
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“GCMs are known to under-represent847 low-level cloudiness (Nam et al., 2012), so may underestimate cτ by simulating the wrong848 spatial patterns of C.849 [INSERT TABLE 3 HERE]850 In summary, the radiative forcing of ari, Fari, is computed as in Eq.”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Nam, C., Bony, S., Dufresne, J. ‐., & Chepfer, H.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Nam, C.
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2012-11
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 21
- Pages
- L21801
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W1925502865
- Cited by
- 375
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 29 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 6
- FWCI
- 13.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Keywords
- cloud radiative effects, cloud vertical structure, cloud feedback, Earth radiation budget, cloud model evaluation, CALIPSO lidar, climate sensitivity, CMIP5
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