Influence of horizontal resolution and complexity of aerosol–cloud interactions on marine stratocumulus and stratocumulus‐to‐cumulus transition in HadGEM3‐GC3.1

• Published in: Quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 2023-07, Vol.149 (755), p.2049-2066
• Main Authors: Ekman, Annica M. L., Nygren, Eva, Pérez, Alejandro Baró, Schwarz, Matthias, Svensson, Gunilla, Bellouin, Nicolas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aerosol-cloud interactions; Aerosols; aerosol–cloud interaction; atmosfärvetenskap och oceanografi; Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography; Cloud droplet concentration; Cloud droplets; Cloud interaction; Cloud parameterization; Clouds; Cumulus clouds; general circulation model; Liquid water content; Marine aerosols; Modelling; Moisture content; Parameterization; Regions; Satellites; Statistical analysis; stratocumulus; Stratocumulus clouds; stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition; Water content
• ISSN: 0035-9009; 1477-870X; 1477-870X
• DOI: 10.1002/qj.4494

Stratocumulus (Sc) clouds and stratocumulus‐to‐cumulus transitions (SCTs) are challenging to represent in global models and they contribute to a large spread in modeled subtropical cloud feedbacks. We evaluate the impact of increasing the horizontal model resolution (∼135, 60 and 25 km, respectively) and increasing the complexity of the aerosol–cloud interaction parameterization (interactive versus non‐interactive at medium resolution) on springtime subtropical marine Sc properties and SCTs in the atmosphere‐only version of HadGEM3‐GC3.1. No significant impact on the spatial location of the SCT could be found between the different model versions. Increasing horizontal resolution led to small but significant increases in liquid water content and a stronger (more negative) shortwave (SW) cloud radiative effect (CRE), in particular over the southern‐hemisphere Sc regions. However, for two out of the four studied regions, the stronger SW CRE also brought the model outside the range of satellite‐derived values of the SW CRE. Applying non‐interactive aerosols instead of interactive aerosols also led to significantly higher liquid water content and a stronger SW CRE over the southern‐hemisphere Sc regions, while over the northern‐hemisphere Sc regions, a competition between a substantial increase in the cloud droplet number concentration and small changes in the liquid water content resulted in a weaker SW CRE or non‐significant changes. In general, using interactive instead of non‐interactive aerosol–cloud interactions brought the model closer to satellite‐retrieved mean values of the SW CRE. Our results suggest that increasing the horizontal resolution or the complexity of the aerosol–cloud parameterization has a small but statistically significant effect on the SW CRE of marine Sc, in particular over regions with high liquid water content. For these regions, the effect of introducing non‐interactive versus interactive aerosol–cloud interactions is about as large as increasing the horizontal resolution from medium to high. Stratocumulus clouds are common over cold subtropical oceans. They tend to break up into shallow cumulus as they are transported by the tradewinds toward the equator, a process called stratocumulus‐to‐cumulus transition (SCT). We investigate if an increased spatial resolution or an explicit representation of aerosol–cloud interactions improves the representation of stratocumulus and SCTs in a climate model. We find that both model upgrades re