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Understanding Infrared Radiation in Cloudy Atmospheres

Explore the complexities of clouds in Earth's atmosphere, including growth processes, radiative transfer equations, and blackbody assumptions for cloud interaction with the surface. Study the impact of cloud forcing on surface temperature dynamics.

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Understanding Infrared Radiation in Cloudy Atmospheres

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  1. PHY2505 - Lecture 9 Infrared radiation in a cloudy atmosphere

  2. The problem with clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere is that they are extremely variable – the statistics of size, shape and frequency are very large. Four main types: stratus cumulus cirrus wave(orographic) Clouds

  3. Composition is normally water droplets but optically thin ice clouds and aerosol layers also exist Growth of cloud particles: Cloud particle ~ 10um Rain drop ~ 1mm – 1,000,000 cloud particles Processes: Diffusion of water vapour to the cloud particles and subsequent condensation (first stage) Collision and coalescence of particles (large particles) Both absorption and scattering need to be considered (water vapour is a strong absorber) Cloud composition

  4. For most problems a relatively simple cloud model is used - a homogeneous plane – parallel cloud layer is assumed Radiative transfer equation for a plane-parallel atmosphere with both scattering and absorption is where m=cos q Bv = blackbody function (assuming Kirchoff’s law holds) be= extinction coefficient ba= absorption coefficient bs= scattering coefficient is the source function involving scattering and absorption processes , and wv is single scattering albedo Infrared radiative transfer of clouds

  5. If the cloud behaves as a blackbody, radiation from above and below would not be able to penetrate the cloud – it would behave like the Earth’s surface with emitted radiance from top and bottom surfaces given by the Planck function. How black are clouds? (Liou Fig 4.12) Blackbody assumption for cloud

  6. Consider a cloud moving over a (snow) surface Exchange of IR radiation between cloud and surface:warming of surface at night (blanket effect) Tc= cloud bottom temperature Ts = surface temperature es = surface emissivity Fc = Flux density emitted from cloud Fs= Flux density emitted from surface Liou, Fig 4.13

  7. Surface upwards flux = surface emission + reflected cloud flux Cloud downwards flux = cloud emission + reflected surface flux Solving simultaneous equations: Calculation of upwards and downwards fluxes

  8. Net flux: If we assume that both surface & cloud are blackbodies (es=0) then we can define the cloud forcing as If we assume surface temperature increase due to cloud is DT, then from the definition of heating rate The increase of surface temperature DT dependes on the time period Dt that the cloud remains over the surface and the net flux divergence Rate of warming of surface

  9. Using optical depth co-ordinates (t) our basic RTE becomes: where the source term S is where the azimuth independent scattering term Jv has been expanded in terms of phase function, P(m, m’) This can be solved exactly by the adding method ( see Liou section 6.4) , or the method of discrete ordinates ( see Liou section 6.2) Exact solution of RTE for a cloud layer

  10. Next time: Two/four stream approximation Eddington’s approximation Order of scattering approximation MODTRAN results for radiance through cloud layers Approximations

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