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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1994

A global radiative-convective feedback

We have investigated the sensitivity of the intensity of convective activity and atmospheric radiative cooling to radiatively thick upper-tropospheric clouds using a new version of the Colorado State University General Circulation Model (CSU GCM). The model includes a bulk cloud microphysics scheme to predict the formation of cloud water, cloud ice, rain, and snow. The cloud optical properties are interactive and dependent upon the cloud water and cloud ice paths. We find that the formation of a persistent upper tropospheric cloud ice shield leads to decreased atmospheric radiative cooling and increased static stability. Convective activity is then strongly suppressed. In this way, upper-tropospheric clouds act as regulators of the global hydrologic cycle, and provide a negative feedback between atmospheric radiative cooling and convective activity.

Fowler, Laura D.↗
NASA NTRS2000

The Contribution of Water Ice Clouds to the Water Cycle in the North Polar Region of Mars: Preliminary Analysis

While it has long been known that Mars' north residual polar cap and the Martian regolith are significant sources of atmospheric water vapor, the amount of water vapor observed in the northern spring season by the Viking Mars Atmospheric Water Detector instrument (MAWD) cannot be attributed to cap and regolith sources alone. Kahn suggested that ice hazes may be the mechanism by which additional water is supplied to the Martian atmosphere. Additionally, a significant decrease in atmospheric water vapor was observed in the late northern summer that could not be correlated with the return of the cold seasonal C02 ice. While the detection of water ice clouds on Mars indicate that water exists in Mars' atmosphere in several different phases, the extent to which water ice clouds play a role in moving water through the Martian atmosphere remains uncertain. Work by Bass et. al. suggested that the time dependence of water ice cap seasonal variability and the increase in atmospheric water vapor depended on the polar cap center reaching 200K, the night time saturation temperature. Additionally, they demonstrated that a decrease in atmospheric water vapor may be attributed to deposition of water ice onto the surface of the polar cap; temperatures were still too warm at this time in the summer for the deposition of carbon dioxide. However, whether water ice clouds contribute significantly to this variability is unknown. Additional information is contained in original extended abstract.

Bass, D. S.↗
DOE OSTI2025

The diurnal susceptibility of subtropical clouds to aerosols

The diurnal susceptibility of clouds and their radiative properties to aerosols is examined during their Lagrangian transition from subtropical stratocumulus to shallow cumulus regimes. Using large-eddy simulations, we analyze the six-day evolution of an air mass along a 3800 km observed trajectory from the coast of Peru toward the equator. Pristine and polluted scenarios are simulated with forcing imposed from weather reanalysis. The polluted scenario exhibits stronger diurnal variations in cloud water, cloud fraction, and albedo, with enhanced nighttime entrainment and suppressed precipitation. The overall response of cloud properties and outgoing shortwave radiation to droplet number concentration follows a distinct diurnal pattern: strong positive cloud adjustments dominate at night and in the morning, while weak negative adjustments prevail in the afternoon. This cycle is driven by the competition between precipitation suppression, which enhances cloud water and coverage, and entrainment drying, which depletes them. In polluted conditions, enhanced entrainment leads to a deeper and more decoupled boundary layer that cannot be sustained by surface fluxes in the afternoon, resulting in negative cloud adjustments. The enhanced entrainment rate under polluted conditions is caused by the reduced sedimentation of cloud and precipitation water from the entrainment zone. While the Twomey effect dominates the diurnal average albedo response, the diurnal variation in the competing cloud adjustments lead to a near-neutral net susceptibility in the afternoon, highlighting the critical role of diurnally varying processes in aerosol-cloud interactions.

Geosciences↗
NASA NTRS1986

Chemistry of OH in remote clouds and its role in the production of formic acid and peroxymonosulfate

The chemistry of OH in nonprecipitating tropospheric clouds was studied using a coupled gas phase/aqueous phase chemical model. The simulation takes into account the radial dependence of the concentrations of short lived aqueous phase species, in particular, O3(aq) OH(aq). Formic acid is shown to be rapidly produced by the aqueous phase reaction between H2C(OH)2 and OH, but HCOO(-) and OH, but HCOO(-) is in turn rapidly oxidized by OH(aq). The HCOOH concentration in cloud is shown to be strongly dependent on the pH of the cloud water; clouds with pH greater than 5 are not efficient HCOOH sources. A novel mechanism is proposed for the oxidation of S(IV) by OH(aq), with the main product predicted to be peroxymonosulfate, HSO5(-). The latter could contribute significantly to total cloud water sulfur.

Jacob, D. J.↗
NASA NTRS2014

CloudSat-Constrained Cloud Ice Water Path and Cloud Top Height Retrievals from MHS 157 and 183.3 GHz Radiances

Ice water path (IWP) and cloud top height (ht) are two of the key variables in determining cloud radiative and thermodynamical properties in climate models. Large uncertainty remains among IWP measurements from satellite sensors, in large part due to the assumptions made for cloud microphysics in these retrievals. In this study, we develop a fast algorithm to retrieve IWP from the 157, 183.3+/-3 and 190.3 GHz radiances of the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) such that the MHS cloud ice retrieval is consistent with CloudSat IWP measurements. This retrieval is obtained by constraining the empirical forward models between collocated and coincident measurements of CloudSat IWP and MHS cloud-induced radiance depression (Tcir) at these channels. The empirical forward model is represented by a lookup table (LUT) of Tcir-IWP relationships as a function of ht and the frequency channel.With ht simultaneously retrieved, the IWP is found to be more accurate. The useful range of the MHS IWP retrieval is between 0.5 and 10 kg/sq m, and agrees well with CloudSat in terms of the normalized probability density function (PDF). Compared to the empirical model, current operational radiative transfer models (RTMs) still have significant uncertainties in characterizing the observed Tcir-IWP relationships. Therefore, the empirical LUT method developed here remains an effective approach to retrieving ice cloud properties from the MHS-like microwave channels.

cloud top height↗
NASA NTRS1995

Short-range precipitation forecasts using assimilation of simulated satellite water vapor profiles and column cloud liquid water amounts

These observing system simulation experiments investigate the assimilation of satellite-observed water vapor and cloud liquid water data in the initialization of a limited-area primitive equations model with the goal of improving short-range precipitation forecasts. The assimilation procedure presented includes two aspects: specification of an initial cloud liquid water vertical distribution and diabatic initialization. The satellite data is simulated for the next generation of polar-orbiting satellite instruments, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the High-Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS), which are scheduled to be launched on the NOAA-K satellite in the mid-1990s. Based on cloud-top height and total column cloud liquid water amounts simulated for satellite data a diagnostic method is used to specify an initial cloud water vertical distribution and to modify the initial moisture distribution in cloudy areas. Using a diabatic initialization procedure, the associated latent heating profiles are directly assimilated into the numerical model. The initial heating is estimated by time averaging the latent heat release from convective and large-scale condensation during the early forecast stage after insertion of satellite-observed temperature, water vapor, and cloud water formation. The assimilation of satellite-observed moisture and cloud water, together withy three-mode diabatic initialization, significantly alleviates the model precipitation spinup problem, especially in the first 3 h of the forecast. Experimental forecasts indicate that the impact of satellite-observed temperature and water vapor profiles and cloud water alone in the initialization procedure shortens the spinup time for precipitation rates by 1-2 h and for regeneration of the areal coverage by 3 h. The diabatic initialization further reduces the precipitation spinup time (compared to adiabatic initialization) by 1 h.

Wu, Xiaohua↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Path to Improving Simulated Properties of Low Clouds over the Beaufort Sea using Airborne In Situ Observations of Subgrid-Scale Variability

Arctic low clouds influence the evolution of the Arctic system through their effects on radiative fluxes, boundary layer mixing, stability, turbulence, humidity, and precipitation. Unfortunately, atmospheric models and retrospective analysis (reanalysis) products struggle to accurately simulate the occurrence and properties of low clouds in the Arctic. One of the main reasons for this problem are the possible unrealistic assumptions that models/reanalyses make about the subgrid-scale (SGS) variability of meteorological properties, as well as the relationship between SGS variability and grid-scale (GS) cloud properties. We utilize cloud and thermodynamic data of low level (primarily) liquid clouds collected from two aircraft campaigns conducted over the Beaufort Sea to better understand and characterize this problem. Examining data from the September 2014 Arctic Radiation-IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) airborne campaign and the 1998 First International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Regional Experiment (FIRE)–Arctic Cloud Experiment (ACE) reveals that GS cloud water variability is closely related with SGS distribution of total water (i.e. water vapor + cloud water). We examine the influence of three assumed SGS parameters on the estimation of GS cloud water: the width of the SGS PDF of total water (ΔQT), the shape of the SGS PDF, and the critical saturation ratio (Scrit), which partitions the SGS PDF into water that is available or not for conversion to cloud water. Both Scrit and ΔQT influence predicted GS cloud water strongly. ARISE and FIRE-ACE disagree somewhat in the details, but both campaigns support the possibility that more realistic representations of these two parameters may lead to more realistic GS cloud water. In particular, both parameters are sensitive to GS relative humidity, and so we examine the effects of allowing these quantities to vary as an empirically-derived linear function of GS relative humidity. In contrast, the shape of the PDF has little effect on the predicted cloud water – a surprising result that merits additional investigation.

J Brant Dodson↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Path to Improving Simulated Properties of Low Clouds over the Beaufort Sea using Airborne In Situ Observations of Subgrid-Scale Variability

Arctic low clouds influence the evolution of the Arctic system through their effects on radiative fluxes, boundary layer mixing, stability, turbulence, humidity, and precipitation. Unfortunately, atmospheric models and retrospective analysis (reanalysis) products struggle to accurately simulate the occurrence and properties of low clouds in the Arctic. One of the main reasons for this problem are the possible unrealistic assumptions that models/reanalyses make about the subgrid-scale (SGS) variability of meteorological properties, as well as the relationship between SGS variability and grid-scale (GS) cloud properties. We utilize cloud and thermodynamic data of low level (primarily) liquid clouds collected from two aircraft campaigns conducted over the Beaufort Sea to better understand and characterize this problem. Examining data from the September 2014 Arctic Radiation-IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) airborne campaign and the 1998 First International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Regional Experiment (FIRE)–Arctic Cloud Experiment (ACE) reveals that GS cloud water variability is closely related with SGS distribution of total water (i.e. water vapor + cloud water). We investigate two related approaches to prediction of GS cloud properties from SGS variability: the critical saturation ratio method, and the critical relative humidity method. We find significant correlation between GS cloud water and SGS supersaturation when the critical saturation ratio is set at 100%, as well as a notable relationship between GS cloud water and the width of the SGS total water distribution. Critical relative humidity also compares well with GS cloud water. However, we also find that the assumptions of a static critical saturation ratio of 100% to be unrealistic, as well as a fixed SGS distribution width. Empirical calculations from the ARISE data show a large sensitivity of these SGS variables to GS relative humidity, and so a SGS parameterization allowing them to vary according to GS thermodynamic properties may result in more realistic GS cloud water values.

J. Brant Dodson↗
NASA NTRS2011

Understanding Effective Diameter and Its Application to Terrestrial Radiation in Ice Clouds

The cloud property known as "effective diameter" or "effective radius", which in essence is the cloud particle size distribution (PSD) volume at bulk density divided by its projected area, is used extensively in atmospheric radiation transfer, climate modeling and remote sensing. This derives from the assumption that PSD optical properties can be uniquely described in terms of their effective diameter, D(sub e), and their cloud water content (CWC), henceforth referred to as the D(sub e)-CWC assumption. This study challenges this assumption, showing that while the D(sub e)-CWC assumption appears generally valid for liquid water clouds, it appears less valid for ice clouds in regions where (1) absorption is not primarily a function of either the PSD ice water content (IWC) or the PSD projected area, and (2) where wave resonance (i.e. photon tunneling) contributes significantly to absorption. These two regions often strongly coincide at terrestrial wavelengths when De less than ~60 m, which is where this D(sub e)-CWC assumption appears poorest. Treating optical properties solely in terms of D(sub e) and IWC may lead to errors up to 24%, 26% and 20% for terrestrial radiation in the window region regarding the absorption and extinction coefficients and the single scattering albedo, respectively. Outside the window region, errors may reach 33% and 42% regarding absorption and extinction. The magnitude and sign of these errors can change rapidly with wavelength, which may produce significant errors in climate modeling, remote sensing and other applications concerned with the wavelength dependence of radiation. Where the D(sub e)-CWC assumption breaks down, ice cloud optical properties appear to depend on D(sub e), IWC and the PSD shape. Optical property parameterizations in climate models and remote sensing algorithms based on historical PSD measurements may exhibit errors due to previously unknown PSD errors (i.e. the presence of ice artifacts due to the shattering of larger ice particles on the probe inlet tube during sampling). More recently developed cloud probes are designed to mitigate this shattering problem. Using realistic PSD shapes for a given temperature (and/or IWC) and cloud type may minimize errors associated with PSD shape in ice optics parameterizations and remote sensing algorithms. While this topic was investigated using two ice optics schemes (the Yang et al., 2005 database and the modified anomalous diffraction approximation, or MADA), a physical understanding of the limitations of the D(sub e)-IWC assumption was made possible by using MADA. MADA allows one to approximate the contribution of photon tunneling to absorption relative to other optical processes, which reveals that part of the error regarding the D(sub e)-IWC assumption can be associated with tunneling. By relating the remaining error to the radiation penetration depth in bulk ice (DELTA L) due to absorption, the domain where the D(sub e)-IWC assumption is weakest was described in terms of D(sub e) and DELTA L.

Mitchell, D. L.↗
NASA NTRS1978

A cloud physics radiometer

The paper describes the design features and capabilities of a seven-channel cloud physics radiometer (CPR) for remote sensing of cloud properties. The CPR channel characteristics and functions are tabulated and diagrammed. Each of the first three channels utilizes a photo-multipler detector, with the high-voltage power supply integrated with the tube into a single unit. In operation a heater is used to keep the optics temperature at or above 273 K and this temperature is constantly monitored. The last four channel detectors and filters are all cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen. The inclined scanning mirror rotates at a rate of 3.48 rps. Registration pulses are triggered and recorded as the mirror enters and leaves the + or -45 deg earth observation region. The ice-cloud, water cloud, snow discriminator detector has worked quite well in general. Interesting radiometer data have been obtained and their analysis is under way. The combination of the CPR and the Cloud Lidar System will make possible sophisticated remote sensing cloud studies.

Kyle, H. L.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Use of TRMM Data to Test an Improved Parameterization of Stratiform Precipitation

We successfully implemented our EAUcup parameterization of convection in our most recent geodesic-grid version of the Colorado State University General Circulation Model (CSU GCM). Tendencies due to convection and large-scale cloud microphysics are computed using the same time-step, allowing smoother interactions between convective and large-scale moist processes. Figures illustrate our most recent progress on the simulation of convective and stratiform precipitations for January. Comparisons against TRMM precipitation radar (PR) data would reveal a systematic overestimation of the simulated monthly-mean convective rainfall over well-known areas of deep convection. One major deficiency in the global distribution of stratiform precipitation simulated in the CSU GCM is the lack of stratiform precipitation over land in the tropics. This result strongly disagree with Fowler and Randall who show that convective and stratiform precipitations always coexist and that their ratio to the total precipitation is about 0.5. We believe that stratiform precipitation over land evaporates before reaching the ground because the lower troposphere remains too dry in response to the lack of convective detrainment occurring immediately above the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). This issue is further investigated at present. We made significant progress in the development of our parameterization of fractional cloudiness. As an example of our ongoing research effort, a figure shows the global distribution of the cloud ice mixing ratio and corresponding fractional area of ice clouds at 250 hPa. These results were obtained using our latitude-longitude grid version of the CSU GCM. There is a nice correspondence between areas of high (low) values of the cloud ice mixing ratio and the cloud fraction. A nice correspondence between the global distribution of the cloud water mixing ratio and fraction of water clouds in the lower troposphere can also be found. We are pursuing this effort, but in the geodesic version of the GCM. We hope to be able to make comparison of the simulated precipitation against TRMM precipitation data in the near future.

Randall, David A.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Latent Heating Retrieval from TRMM Observations Using a Simplified Thermodynamic Model

A procedure for the retrieval of hydrometeor latent heating from TRMM active and passive observations is presented. The procedure is based on current methods for estimating multiple-species hydrometeor profiles from TRMM observations. The species include: cloud water, cloud ice, rain, and graupel (or snow). A three-dimensional wind field is prescribed based on the retrieved hydrometeor profiles, and, assuming a steady-state, the sources and sinks in the hydrometeor conservation equations are determined. Then, the momentum and thermodynamic equations, in which the heating and cooling are derived from the hydrometeor sources and sinks, are integrated one step forward in time. The hydrometeor sources and sinks are reevaluated based on the new wind field, and the momentum and thermodynamic equations are integrated one more step. The reevalution-integration process is repeated until a steady state is reached. The procedure is tested using cloud model simulations. Cloud-model derived fields are used to synthesize TRMM observations, from which hydrometeor profiles are derived. The procedure is applied to the retrieved hydrometeor profiles, and the latent heating estimates are compared to the actual latent heating produced by the cloud model. Examples of procedure's applications to real TRMM data are also provided.

Grecu, Mircea↗