The longwave feedback λ characterizes how Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation changes with surface temperature Ts, making it an important quantity to estimate Earth’s climate sensitivity. Compared to the traditionally studied λ, its spectrally resolved counterpart λν offers deeper insights into the underlying physical processes. Both λ and λν are known to vary with Ts, but this Ts dependence has so far only been investigated using models. Here, we derive the clear-sky spectral longwave feedback λν for surface temperatures Ts between 210K and 310K based on observations of the AIRS instrument onboard the Aqua satellite. We disentangle the radiative signatures of the atmospheric general circulation by simulating λν based on a single-column model with different degrees of idealization. We find that at low Ts, the observed λν is dominated by the surface response and sensitive to biases in Earth’s skin temperature. At higher Ts, changes in atmospheric temperature and humidity, as well as their vertical distribution, play an important role in shaping λν . These changes impact both the absorption of surface emission in the atmospheric window and the atmospheric emission in the water vapor and CO2 absorption bands. Our results demonstrate that we can fully understand the observed λν at a wide range of Ts using a simple conceptual model of Earth’s atmosphere. This understanding can be used to better constrain changes in R and T with warming in Earth’s climate using satellite observations, as well as for paleoclimate and exoplanet studies.

Martin Burgdorf

and 3 more

Theresa Lang

and 3 more

Robert Pincus

and 11 more

Changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases within the atmosphere lead to changes in radiative fluxes throughout the atmosphere. The value of this change, called the instantaneous radiative forcing, varies across climate models, due partly to differences in the distribution of clouds, humidity, and temperature across models, and partly due to errors introduced by approximate treatments of radiative transfer. This paper describes an experiment within the Radiative Forcing Model Intercomparision Project that uses benchmark calculations made with line-by-line models to identify parameterization error in the representation of absorption and emission by greenhouse gases. The clear-sky instantaneous forcing by greenhouse gases to which the world has been subject is computed using a set of 100 profiles, selected from a re-analysis of present-day conditions, that represent the global annual mean forcing with sampling errors of less than 0.01 \si{\watt\per\square\meter}. Six contributing line-by-line models agree in their estimate of this forcing to within 0.025 \si{\watt\per\square\meter} while even recently-developed parameterizations have typical errors four or more times larger, suggesting both that the samples reveal true differences among line-by-line models and that parameterization error will be readily resolved. Agreement among line-by-line models is better in the longwave than in the shortwave where differing treatments of the water vapor vapor continuum affect estimates of forcing by carbon dioxide and methane. The impacts of clouds on instantaneous radiative forcing are roughly estimated, as are adjustments due to stratospheric temperature change. Adjustments are large only for ozone and for carbon dioxide, for which stratospheric cooling introduces modest non-linearity.

Theresa Lang

and 5 more

We conduct a series of eight 45-day experiments with a global storm-resolving model (GSRM) to test the sensitivity of relative humidity R in the tropics to changes in model resolution and parameterizations. These changes include changes in horizontal and vertical grid spacing as well as in the parameterizations of microphysics and turbulence, and are chosen to capture currently existing differences among GSRMs. To link the R distribution in the tropical free troposphere with processes in the deep convective regions, we adopt a trajectory-based assessment of the last-saturation paradigm. The perturbations we apply to the model result in tropical mean R changes ranging from 0.5% to 8% (absolute) in the mid troposphere. The generated R spread is similar to that in a multi-model ensemble of GSRMs and smaller than the spread across conventional general circulation models, supporting that an explicit representation of deep convection reduces the uncertainty in tropical R. The largest R changes result from changes in parameterizations, suggesting that model physics represent a major source of humidity spread across GSRMs. The R in the moist tropical regions is disproportionately sensitive to vertical mixing processes within the tropics, which impact R through their effect on the last-saturation temperature rather than their effect on the evolution of the humidity since last-saturation. In our analysis the R of the dry tropical regions strongly depends on the exchange with the extra-tropics. The interaction between tropics and extratropics could change with warming and presage changes in the radiatively sensitive dry regions.