Marine boundary layer (BL) clouds profoundly influence the global shortwave (SW) radiation budget through their effect on albedo, but a significant source of turbulent energy to the BL and the clouds themselves is longwave (LW) cloud top cooling. Cloudy regions can be thought of as radiating as blackbodies in the LW, with a net radiative flux of nearly zero inside the cloud itself and a signifi...

The study of climate and climate change is hindered by a lack of information on the effect of clouds on the radiation balance of the earth, referred to as the cloud-radiative forcing. Quantitative estimates of the global distributions of cloud-radiative forcing have been obtained from the spaceborne Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) launched in 1984. For the April 1985 period, the global...

Large-scale deforestation may affect the surface energy budget and consequently climate by changing the physical properties of the land surface, namely biophysical effects. This study presents the potential energy budget change caused by deforestation in Northeastern China and its climate implications, which was evaluated by quantifying the differences in MODIS-observed surface physical propert...

Surface longwave radiation (SLR) is an essential geophysical parameter of Earth’s energy balance, and its estimation based on thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing data has been extensively studied. However, it difficult to estimate cloudy SLR from TIR measurements. Satellite passive microwave (PMW) radiometers measure under the clouds therefore can in all weather conditions. We constructed ret...

For the tropical atmosphere on planetary scales, it is common to model the circulation using strong damping. Here, with new data analysis techniques, evidence suggests that damping can actually be neglected. Specifically, near the equator, the east–west overturning circulation is in agreement with the undamped wave response to atmospheric heating. To estimate the heating, satellite observations...