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Reducing discrepancies in atmospheric heat budget of Tibetan Plateau by satellite-based estimates of radiative cooling and cloud-radiation feedback

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Summary

Past investigations of the summertime heat budget over the Tibetan Plateau have not included detailed estimates of radiative cooling (Q R ) nor have they carefully considered the effects of cloudiness on this term. The various attempts to eyaluate different combinations of heat and moisture budget torms and to understand the sources of energy to the summer armospheric heat source over the plateau are not in agreement, partly because of remaining discrepancies in the radiative and turbulent flux components, and partly because until recently, the conventional data sets needed for independently estimating the total heating and moistening terms have been incomplete. The uncertainties in the radiative term have also led to difficulties in assessing the uncertainties in the other budget terms, since no study to date has assembled a complete enough data set to allow a unified calculation of all budget quantities or to obtain budget closure. Recently published results of Yanai and his colleagues involving apparent heat source calculations for the plateau region based on a much improved FGGE data set, have motivated the examination of whether more detailed radiative calculations can help resolve past discrepancies in the budget terms on a monthly time scale. This study uses a continuous time series of 22-km resolution INSAT geosynchronous satellite measurements and ECMWF profile analyses in conjunction with medium spectral resolution radiative transfer models to estimate the slicrtwave and longwave components of the radiative cooling term and the role of cloudiness on these components for the 1988 summer period. The calculations reveal both meridional and zonal structure in radiative divergence across the plateau associated with the substantial gradients of cloudiness and aridity that dominate the summertime plateau climatology. The calculations also indicate that the magnitudes of both cloud-induced shortwave heating and longwave cooling over the plateau are much greater than over low-elevation regions. Moreover, since cloud-induced longwave cooling exceeds cloud-induced shortwave heating, the bulk effect of clouds is to radiatively cool the plateau atmosphere. The high resolution calculations are reduced to monthly averaged budget quantities for analyzing whether existing discrepancies in the plateau heat budget can be resolved. Although there is no means to rigorously verify the accuracies and representativeness of the individual budget terms, the new radiative estimates combined with the most reliable current estimates of total heating and turbulent fluxes, produce near closure (within 4%) of the plateau heat budget for the June to August period.

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  1. E. A. Smith

    Present address: Department of Meteorology & Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, Florida State University, 32306, Tallahassee, FL, USA

  2. L. Shi

    Present address: SeaSpace Corporation, 9240 Trade Place, Suite 100, 92126, San Diego, CA, USA

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    Smith, E.A., Shi, L. Reducing discrepancies in atmospheric heat budget of Tibetan Plateau by satellite-based estimates of radiative cooling and cloud-radiation feedback. Meteorl. Atmos. Phys. 56, 229–260 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01030139

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