Radiative Effects of Cloud Inhomogeneity and
نویسنده
چکیده
The representation of cloud systems and cloud-radiation interaction is considered to be one of major uncertainties in general circulation models (GCMs). This arises because (1) complete observations of cloud systems are impossible and available measurements are very limited; (2) cloud-radiation interactions are scale-dependent (Dudek et al. 1996) while current GCMs cannot explicitly resolve them (Wu and Moncrieff 2001a); and (3) conventional GCM parameterizations of cloud-radiation interactions are inadequate and model results strongly depend on cloud-overlap assumptions and optical property approximations (Del Genio et al. 1996; Fowler and Randall 1996; Liang and Wang 1997).
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