alcide_zhao@ed_ac_uk
New Member
Hi all,Just thought it would be useful to people who may by any chance work with radiation balance at the TOA using CESM1.The current CAM master field has diagnostics for net SW radiaiton flux at TOA (FSNTOA), upelling radiaiton SW flux at TOA (FSUTOA), net SW radiaiton flux at Top of the Model (FSNT), upwelling LW radiaiton flux at the top of the model (FLUT), net LW radiaiton flux at the top of the model (FLNT),From the other discusision (https://bb.cgd.ucar.edu/toa-vs-top-model), The Totop of the Model (TOM) in CAM is 3.64mb so it is not TOA.1. You should not use FLUT to approximate TOA outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), athough a lot of people have done this already.2. If you are calculating TOA radiation imbalance, you should consider FSNT - FLNT (boht at TOM) instead of FSNTOA - FLNT, since the latter will give you around 4 w/m2 of imbalance due to the reason that they are in two different layers. I think this should be carefully resolved to have better radiation diagnostics to represnet both LW and SW radiaiton at TOA.3. FLNT is not equal to FLUT (a net difference of around 1.5 W/m2 in an equilibrium model simulaiton), which means that there is longwave radiation coming into the atmosphere from the layer 3hPa-TOA. I do not know how the radiation code handlewith this, but please, if anyone, can explain it?4. About FSUTOA, please take CAUTION with this diagnostics if you are working with radiation balance. Please feel free to comment on this should anything be inapproprite! discussions is widely open!Cheers, Alcide