Sensitivity to Large-Scale Environmental Fields of the Relaxed Arakawa–Schubert Parameterization in the NASA GEOS-1 GCM

An adjoint sensitivity analysis of the relaxed Arakawa–Schubert scheme in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration GEOS-1 GCM with respect to perturbations in large-scale environmental fields was conducted. The response functions were defined as measures of the strength of convective cloud precipitation, the cloud-induced heating and drying (moistening) in both the instantaneous and time-integrated sense. The roles of different variables in producing variations on the response functions were evaluated and the most sensitive vertical levels of the perturbations were identified with the gradient provided by the adjoint model. It was found that the potential temperature perturbations had significant impact on all the response functionals analyzed, especially on the convective precipitation. The perturbations at subcloud layers and at midtroposphere from 500 to 600 hPa were found to be the most influential. The impact from the moisture fields was most significant on cloud heating and drying effects and the strongest influence came from the subcloud layers. The moisture perturbations at midtroposphere also significantly influenced the cloud drying (moistening) effect. On the other hand, the cloud-induced heating and drying at levels between 400 and 600 hPa felt the strongest impact from perturbations in large-scale fields. The influence of the perturbations in the wind field was weaker but still provided reasonable sensitivity patterns. The time-integrated and instantaneous sensitivities for the same response differ only in magnitude but not in the general distributions. The impact of large-scale condensation and reevaporation on the sensitivity was also evaluated. Their effect was significant at the midtropospheric level and they enhanced the model sensitivity to perturbations in temperature and moisture fields. The sensitivity analysis results obtained indicated that accurate gridscale vertical profile of temperature and moisture, especially at subcloud layers and midtroposphere between 500 and 600 hPa were essential for the accurate evaluation of the cumulus cloud effects. The implications of the results of this work for variational data assimilation were also discussed.