The individual components of the slope-parallel surface radiation balance were measured in and around Arizona’s Meteor Crater to investigate the effects of topography on the radiation balance. The crater basin has a diameter of 1.2 km and a depth of 170 m. The observations cover the crater floor, the crater rim, four sites on the inner sidewalls on an east–west transect, and two sites outside t...

Ocean water clarity affects the distribution of shortwave heating in the water column. In a one-dimensional time-mean sense, increased clarity would be expected to cool the surface and heat subsurface depths as shortwave radiation penetrates deeper into the water column. However, wind-driven upwelling, boundary currents, and the seasonal cycle of mixing can bring water heated at depth back to t...

Abstract Based on the measurements conducted over landfast sea ice in Prydz Bay, East Antarctica during sea-ice growth season 2016, various parameterization schemes high-resolution thermodynamic snow/ice model HIGHTSI are evaluated. The scheme of turbulent fluxes produces largest errors compared with for other surface heat fluxes. However, thickness simulation is most sensitive to differences u...

[1] We describe a method that retrieves surface photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and its direct and diffuse components from the Surface and Atmospheric Radiation Budget (SARB) product of Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). The shortwave spectrum in the SARB Edition 2 is calculated in 15 bands, 4 of which are used to develop the PAR, in conjunction with the look-up tab...

[1] The response of water vapor and clouds to El Niño warming over the tropical Pacific in the most recent three versions of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM2, T42 CAM3, and T85 CAM3) is quantified and compared to observations. It is found that all three models have a stronger response in the greenhouse effect of water vapor than that indicated...

Cloud absorption of solar radiation has been the focus of several recent studies and the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM) Enhanced Shortwave Absorption Experiment (ARESE). One of the methods for studying cloud absorption has employed the analysis of coincident surface and satellite measurements. To provide consistency with the earlier satellite results, this paper presents the re...

The Project for Intercomparison of Land Surface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS) Phase 2(e) showed that in cold regions the annual runoff production in Land Surface Schemes (LSSs) is closely related to the maximum snow accumulation, which in turn is controlled in large part by winter sublimation. To help further explain the relationship between snow cover, turbulent exchanges and runoff product...

[1] The impact of the penetration length scale of shortwave radiation into the surface ocean is investigated with a fully coupled ocean, atmosphere, land and ice model. Oceanic shortwave radiation penetration is assumed to depend on the chlorophyll concentration. As chlorophyll concentrations increase the distribution of shortwave heating becomes shallower. This change in heat distribution impa...