Evaluation of CanESM Cloudiness, Cloud Type and Cloud Radiative Forcing Climatologies Using the CALIPSO-GOCCP and CERES Datasets

In this study, the annual and seasonal climatology of cloud fraction (CF) type simulated by Canadian Environmental System Models (CanESMs) version 5 (CanESM5) 2 (CanESM2) at their fully coupled AMIP configurations were validated against CALIPSO-GOCCP-based CF. The CFs produced using CALIPSO-COSP simulator based on CanESMs data atmospheric (AMIP) configuration are also evaluated. shortwave, longwave, net radiative forcing CanESM5 satellite observations recent CERES radiation products. On average, all models have a negative bias in total CF with global mean biases (MBs) 2%, 2.4%, 3.9%, 6.4%, 5.6%, 7.1% for coupled-CanESM5, AMIP-CanESM5, COSP-AMIP-CanESM5, coupled-CanESM2, AMIP-CanESM2, COSP-AMIP-CanESM2, respectively, indicating that has smaller MB. There no significant differences between versions model, but COSP-based model-simulated showed larger biases. Although captured well climatological features CF, they exhibited reaching up to 40% over some geographical locations. This is particularly prevalent low level (LL) marine stratocumulus/cumulus, convectively active tropical latitudes normally dominated high (HL) clouds polar regions where negative, positive, positive corresponding these locations, respectively. AMIP-CanESM5 model performed reasonably simulating (CRF) slight NetCRF TOA surface would be expected if inconsistent result may attributed parameterization optical properties model. distributions NetCRF, however, can ±40 Wm−2 depending location level. Pearson correlation there strong distribution it significantly influenced LL HL clouds.