An Efficient Parameterization for Surface Shortwave 3D Radiative Effects
in Large-Eddy Simulations of Shallow Cumulus Clouds
Abstract
Most atmospheric models consider radiative transfer only in the vertical
direction (1D), as 3D radiative transfer calculations are too costly.
Thereby, horizontal transfer of radiation is omitted, resulting in
incorrect surface radiation fields. The horizontal spreading of diffuse
radiation results in darker cloud shadows, whereas it increases the
surface radiation in clear sky patches (cloud enhancement). In this
study, we developed a simple method to account for the horizontal
transfer of diffuse radiation. We spatially filter the surface diffuse
radiation field with a Gaussian filter, which is conceptually simple and
computationally efficient. We applied the filtering to the results of
Large-Eddy Simulations for two summer days in Cabauw, the Netherlands,
on which shallow cumulus clouds formed during the day. We obtained the
optimal filter size by matching the simulation results with detailed
high-quality observations (1Hz). Without the filtering, cloud
enhancements are not captured, and the probability distribution of
global radiation is unimodal, whereas the observed distribution is
bimodal. After filtering, the probability distribution of global
radiation is bimodal and cloud enhancements are simulated, in line with
the observations. We found that small changes in the filter width do not
strongly influence the results. Furthermore, we showed that the width of
the filter can be parameterized as a linear function of e.g. the cloud
cover. Hence, this work presents a proof-of-concept for our method to
come to more realistic surface irradiances by filtering diffuse
radiation at the surface.