Cirrus detrainment-temperature feedback

Cirrus Detrainment-Temperature Feedback

In considering the role of cirriform clouds in climate change, it is important to distinguish among the relationships of different high cloud types to large-scale atmospheric dynamics. While cirrostratus and cirrocumulus (CsCc) have a clear relation to deep convective sources, the ensemble behavior of cirrus is more subtle. An empirical relation is found between cirrus fraction and deep cloud t...

Local Air Entrainment and Detrainment

Air and water are usually well separated by gravity due to their extreme difference in specific weight. Whenever they are mixed, however, they give rise to a very complex two-phase flow situation. The hydraulic engineer is often faced with the problem of estimating the effects of entrained air upon the flow, because this may be essential for the safe operation of a hydra·ul ic structure. Depend...

Considerations for Modeling Thin Cirrus Effects via Brightness Temperature Differences

Brightness temperature difference (BTD) values are calculated for selected Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-6) channels (3.9, 12.7 pm) and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer channels (3.7, 12.0 pm). Daytime and nighttime discrimination of particle size information is possible given the infrared cloud extinction optical depth and the BTD value. BTD values are present...

Observations of detrainment signatures from non-precipitating orographic cumulus clouds

Tropical cirrus and water vapor: an effective Earth infrared iris feedback?

We revisit a model of feedback processes proposed by Lindzen et al. (2001), in which an assumed 22% reduction in the area of tropical high clouds per degree increase in sea surface temperature produces negative feedbacks associated with upper tropospheric water vapor and cloud radiative effects. We argue that the water vapor feedback is overestimated in Lindzen et al. (2001) by at least 60%, an...