Simulations of cloud-radiation interaction with imposed largescale dynamics from the DYNAMO northern sounding array

Abstract:

The recently accomplished CINDY/DYNAMO project observed three MJO events in the equatorial Indian Ocean from October to December 2011. Analysis of the moist static energy budget by Sobel et al. (2014) indicates that the moist static energy anomalies in these events grew and were sustained to a significant extent by radiative feedbacks. We present here a study of radiative fluxes and clouds in a set of cloud-resolving simulations of the same DYNAMO MJO events.

The simulations are driven by the large scale forcing dataset from the DYNAMO northern sounding array, and carried out in doubly-periodic domains using the WRF model. Simulated cloud properties and radiative fluxes are compared to the observed reflectivity from the SPolka radar and observed radiative fluxes from the CERES and VISST datasets. To accommodate the uncertainty in cloud microphysics, we have tested a number of single-moment (SM) and double-moment (DM) microphysical schemes in the WRF model.

We find that in general the SM schemes tend to underestimate radiative flux anomalies in the active phase of the MJOs, while the DM schemes perform better but can instead overestimate radiative fluxes. All the microphysics schemes tested exhibit bias in the shape of the histograms of radiative fluxes and radar reflectivity. Analysis of CRM-simulated radar reflectivity indicates that this microphysics-related radiative flux uncertainty is closely related to how much stratiform clouds the CRM can simulate. SM schemes underestimate stratiform clouds by a factor of 2, while DM schemes simulate much more stratiform cloud, closer to observation, but shows a peak in the histogram at 15-20 dBz that is absent in observations. The double-moment Morrison scheme appears to give the best results in TOA fluxes associated with the MJO convective anomalies despite biases in the histograms of cloud and radiative fluxes.