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Title

Subtropical Marine Stratocumulus Cloud Deck Spatial Errors in the E3SMv1 Atmosphere Model

Authors

Michael A. Brunke (The University of Arizona), Po-Lun Ma (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), J. E. Jack Reeves Eyre (The University of Arizona), Philip J. Rasch (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Armin Sorooshian (The University of Arizona), Xubin Zeng (The University of Arizona)

Abstract

Subtropical marine low-level clouds continue to be poorly simulated in models despite many studies and field experiments devoted to their improvement. Many of these previous studies have noted the lack of simulated clouds in the regions where the subtropical marine stratocumulus cloud decks should be, implying amplitude errors, but it is also recognized that these decks have spatial errors. Here we focus on the spatial errors in the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP) run of version 1 of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SMv1) developed by the Department of Energy relative to the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder (CALIPSO) climatology. Location errors of the cloud decks are characterized by centroid distances, while size errors are quantified by area ratios. The combined effects of location, size, and shape errors are measured by overlap ratios. E3SMv1’s spatial errors are compared to those of three other U.S. climate and Earth system models.

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