Relative effects of solar and infrared radiative forcing in a mesoscale model

A new efficient parameterization scheme for solar short-wave radiative heating, as a component of the net radiative effects in the atmosphere, is tested in a three-dimensional mesoscale model. This model is designed with moist convective processes in mind, so that the radiative parameterization (solar plus thermal infrared) are interactive with the cloud field. Previous work by the authors with only an infrared scheme has demonstrated that cloud-radiation interactions are characterized by strong cloud-top cooling, leading to upper cloud-layer destabilization. The effects of including solar heating are to modulate the strength of the strong infrared cooling, thereby leading to weaker interactions between clouds, radiation, and mesoscale fields. The present study shows that even on the mesoscale and for relatively short time-spans, radiative processes in the presence of clouds are not negligible.As a further step, a simple fractional cloud cover parameterization is introduced and the model response is compared with results omitting this parameterization.