Subtropical Low Cloud Response to a Warmer Climate in a Superparameterized Climate Model. Part I: Regime Sorting and Physical Mechanisms

Abstract

The subtropical low cloud response to a climate with SST uniformly warmed by 2 K is analyzed in the SP-CAM superparameterized climate model, in which each grid column is replaced by a two-dimensional cloud-resolving model (CRM). Intriguingly, SP-CAM shows substantial low cloud increases over the subtropical oceans in the warmer climate. The paper aims to understand the mechanism for these increases. The subtropical low cloud increase is analyzed by sorting grid-column months of the climate model into composite cloud regimes using percentile ranges of lower tropospheric stability (LTS). LTS is observed to be well correlated to subtropical low cloud amount and boundary layer vertical structure. The low cloud increase in SP-CAM is attributed to boundary-layer destabilization due to increased clear-sky radiative cooling in the warmer climate. This drives more shallow cumulus convection and a moister boundary layer, inducing cloud increases and further increasing the radiative cooling. The boundary layer depth does not change substantially, due to compensation between increased radiative cooling (which promotes more turbulent mixing and boundary-layer deepening) and slight strengthening of the boundary-layer top inversion (which inhibits turbulent entrainment and promotes a shallower boundary layer). The widespread changes in low clouds do not appear to be driven by changes in mean subsidence. In a companion paper we use column-mode CRM simulations based on LTS-composite profiles to further study the low cloud response mechanisms and to explore the sensitivity of low cloud response to grid resolution in SP-CAM.

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