Stratocumulus Clouds in Southeastern Pacific Simulated by Eight CMIP5–CFMIP Global Climate Models

Abstract

his study examines the stratocumulus clouds and associated cloud feedback in the southeast Pacific (SEP) simulated by eight global climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) and Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) using long-term observations of clouds, radiative fluxes, cloud radiative forcing (CRF), sea surface temperature (SST), and large-scale atmosphere environment. The results show that the state-of-the-art global climate models still have significant difficulty in simulating the SEP stratocumulus clouds and associated cloud feedback. Comparing with observations, the models tend to simulate significantly less cloud cover, higher cloud top, and a variety of unrealistic cloud albedo. The insufficient cloud cover leads to overly weak shortwave CRF and net CRF. Only two of the eight models capture the observed positive cloud feedback at subannual to decadal time scales. The cloud and radiation biases in the models are associated with 1) model biases in large-scale temperature structure including the lack of temperature inversion, insufficient lower troposphere stability (LTS), and insufficient reduction of LTS with local SST warming, and 2) improper model physics, especially insufficient increase of low cloud cover associated with larger LTS. The two models that arguably do best at simulating the stratocumulus clouds and associated cloud feedback are the only ones using cloud-top radiative cooling to drive boundary layer turbulence.