Abstract
The temporal variability of convection at short time-scales (from diurnal to intra-seasonal) is an important characteristic outlining the response of the tropical atmosphere to astronomical forcing and its interaction with dynamical forcing. The spatial organisation of the convective cells into larger clusters of different sizes also is a strong characteristic of tropical convection. This paper presents analyses that can be used to evaluate the spatio-temporal variability in GCMs from measurements of geostationary meteorological satellites. The aim is not only to evaluate the description of the convective activity but also to trace the source of the cloud radiative forcing obtained in GCMs. These analyses make use of the modelled radiance in the infrared window and are compared to satellite data in a “model-to-satellite”approach. As an illustration, we present some preliminary results obtained from a comparison between the ECMWF model and Meteosat data over Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Three model time series are used based either on “first guess” or on two runs without assimilation. The aim of the “first guess” time series is to validate the response of the cloud parameterization to realistic (i.e. close to the analysis) dynamical and thermodynamical fields. Two runs of three months without assimilation, identical except for the cloud scheme, are also analysed.
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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Duvel, J.P., Morcrette, J.J., Klinker, E. (1996). Evaluation of the Spatio-Temporal Variability of Tropical Convection in GCMs by Using Geostationary Satellite Data. In: Treut, H.L. (eds) Climate Sensitivity to Radiative Perturbations. NATO ASI Series, vol 34. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61053-0_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61053-0_4
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