Identification

Title

Decomposing cloud radiative feedbacks by cloud-top phase

Abstract

Changes in cloud scattering properties and emissivity that arise from atmospheric warming cause substantial radiative feedbacks in model projections of anthropogenic climate change, and the relative importance of the underlying mechanisms is poorly understood. One leading hypothesis is that ice-to-liquid conversions cause clouds to optically thicken, producing a major negative feedback. We test this hypothesis by developing a method to decompose cloud radiative feedbacks by cloud-top phase. The method is applied to an ensemble of six state-of-the-art global climate models run with prescribed sea surface temperature. In these simulations, the global mean of the net cloud scattering and emissivity feedback from cloud-phase conversions ranges from −0.17 to −0.01 W m −2 K −1 , while the overall net cloud feedback ranges from 0.02 to 0.91 W m −2 K −1 . The multimodel mean of the cloud scattering and emissivity feedback from cloud-phase conversions is approximately 19% of the magnitude of the multimodel mean of the overall cloud feedback (−0.10 vs 0.52 W m −2 K −1 ). These results indicate that cloud-phase conversions cause a robust negative feedback by changing cloud scattering and emissivity, but this mechanism makes a modest contribution to the overall cloud feedback at the global scale.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d72z19z2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2025-08-15T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact