Abstract
This research focuses on the observed tropical oceanic high clouds above the 300 hPa level, to investigate their diurnal cycles and radiative effects at the top of atmosphere. The diurnal centroid is used to quantify the diurnal cycle based on circular statistics to indicate the daily peaking time of cloud cover. It is found that the diurnal cycle of the tropical oceanic high clouds can significantly impact their cloud radiative effects, with a correlation coefficient of − 0.63 at the 95% significant level and a slope of − 14.5 Wm−2 h−1 between the net cloud radiative effects and the diurnal centroid shifting from midnight towards noon. This implies that the changes of the diurnal cycle can strongly influence the Earth radiative budget, and thus possibly impose radiative feedbacks to affect atmospheric circulations under global climate warming. It is also found that the strength of convection and the cold point temperature are two major environmental factors in influencing the diurnal-cycle centroid of the tropical oceanic high clouds. Furthermore, according to observations, the correlation coefficient between the diurnal-cycle centroid of the tropical oceanic high clouds and the global mean temperature is 0.75 at the 95% significant level, indicating a 2-h shift of the tropical oceanic high clouds towards noon with 1℃ increases of the global mean temperature.
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Data availability
In this study, the CERES SYN1degEd4.1 product can be found at https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/data/. The ERA5 reanalysis data can be downloaded at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home. The data of the global mean temperature are from the climate indices of the Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) at https://psl.noaa.gov/.
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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (41922032, 41875028 and 41575016).
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Wang, Z., Ge, J., Yan, J. et al. Interannual shift of tropical high cloud diurnal cycle under global warming. Clim Dyn 59, 3391–3400 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06273-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06273-6