Satellite observations of temperature, water vapor, precipitation and longwave radiation are used to characterize the variation of the tropical hydrologic and energy budgets associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). As the tropical oceans warm during an El Niño event, the precipitation intensity, water vapor mass, and temperature of the tropical atmosphere are observed to increas...

The variation of aerosols, especially dust aerosol, in time and space plays an important role in climate forcing studies. Aerosols can effectively reduce land surface longwave emission and re-emit energy at a colder temperature, making estimation of downwelling surface longwave radiation (DSLR) with satellite data difficult. Using the latest atmospheric radiative transfer code (MODTRAN 5.0), we...

An important step toward improving radiative transfer codes in general circulation models (GCMs) is to thoroughly evaluate them either by comparison to measurements directly or by comparing them to other data-validated radiation models. The Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM) shortwave (SW) radiation model accurately reproduces direct beam fluxes from the Line-by-Line Radiative Transfer Model...

[1] In the context of climate feedback associated with temperature change, there exist two potential mechanisms that affect the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and the downward longwave radiation (DLR). One is the ‘‘Planck’’ effect that determines the blackbody thermal emission at a considered temperature. The other is the ‘‘absorptivity’’ effect, in which a temperature change causes a change...

The new radiation-transfer scheme RRTM is described in the article on page 2.The new scheme includes the representation of sixteen spectral bands, compared with six bands in the previous operational scheme.This allows improvements in the spectral description of the radiative properties of both the earth’s surface and the clouds.Tests of the impact of the scheme indicate improved anomaly correla...

ENSO surface longwave radiation forcing over the tropical Pacific K. G. Pavlakis, D. Hatzidimitriou, E. Drakakis, C. Matsoukas, A. Fotiadi, N. Hatzianastassiou, and I. Vardavas Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, Heraklion, Crete, Greece Department of General Applied Science, Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Greece Department of Physics, University of Crete, Crete, Greec...

The Earth Radiation Budget at the top of the atmosphere quantifies how the Earth gains energy from the Sun and loses energy to space. It is of fundamental importance for climate and climate change. In this paper, the current state-of-the-art of the satellite measurements of the Earth Radiation Budget is reviewed. Combining all available measurements, the most likely value of the Total Solar Irr...

Recent developments to the Local-scale Urban Meteorological Parameterization Scheme (LUMPS), a simple model able to simulate the urban energy balance, are presented. The major development is the coupling of LUMPS to the Net All-Wave Radiation Parameterization (NARP). Other enhancements include that the model now accounts for the changing availability of water at the surface, seasonal variations...