Projections of future surface ozone over Europe conducted utilizing chemistry transport models (CTMs) coupled to climate models differ greatly, even in sign. CTM sensitivity studies were conducted in order to investigate the importance of changes in natural isoprene emissions and dry deposition to vegetation, both coupled to meteorology. This knowledge can be used to improve surface ozone projections. Our simulations suggest climate change over Europe would cause changes in surface ozone between -4.0 to +13 ppb(v) on average (April-September) and -3.5 to +25 ppb(v) on average (April-September) daily maximum from 1961 - 1990 to 2071 - 2100. The change is positive in the southwest and negative in the north. The isoprene emissions increased by a factor of about 1.8 from 1961 - 1990 to 2071 - 2100. A rescaling of isoprene emissions shows that the large increase in isoprene emission is of importance (0 - 30% of the change in surface ozone) in central, southern, and western Europe. The use of a formulation for ozone dry deposition to vegetation, dependent on meteorology, and changes in snow cover, affecting the dry deposition, are more important processes. The changes in dry deposition to vegetation (not including changes in aerodynamic resistance) explain up to 80% of the surface ozone change in Spain. Therefore it is vital to include meteorological dependence for dry deposition of ozone to vegetation in surface ozone projections. Isoprene emissions are of less importance, but they are nonnegligible and should definitely be emitted online in climate ozone projection studies.

[ 1] The Aerosol Optical Depths (AODs) retrieved from Brewer Ozone Spectrophotometer measurements with a method previously developed (Cheymol and De Backer, 2003) are now validated by comparisons between AODs from six Brewer spectrophotometers and two CSEM SPM2000 sunphotometers: two Brewer spectrophotometers 016 and 178 at Uccle in Belgium; one Brewer spectrophotometer 128 and one sunphotometer CSEM SPM2000 at Norrkoping in Sweden; and three Brewer instruments 040, 072, 156 at Arosa and one CSEM SPM2000 sunphotometer at Davos in Switzerland. The comparison between AODs from Brewer spectrophotometer 128 at 320.1 nm and sunphotometer SPM2000 at 368 nm at Norrkoping shows that the AODs obtained from the Brewer measurements with the Langley Plot Method (LPM) are very accurate if the neutral density filter spectral transmittances are well known: with the measured values of these filters, the correlation coefficient, the slope, and the intercept of the regression line are 0.98, 0.85 +/- 0.004, and 0.02 +/- 0.0014, respectively. The bias observed is mainly owing to the wavelength difference between the two instruments. The comparison between AODs from different Brewer spectrophotometers confirm that AODs will be in very good agreement if they are measured with several Brewer instruments at the same place: At Uccle, the correlation coefficient, slope, and intercept of the regression line are 0.98, 1.02 +/- 0.003, and 0.06 +/- 0.001, respectively; at Arosa, the comparisons between the AODs from three Brewer spectrophotometers 040, 072, and 156 give a correlation coefficient, a slope, and an intercept of the regression line above 0.94, 0.98 and below 0.04, respectively.

This paper is based on a comparative study on ultraviolet radiation (UV) measurements and UV reconstruction models for eight sites in Europe. Reconstruction models include neural network techniques and radiative transfer modeling combined with empirical relationships. The models have been validated against quality-controlled ground-based measurements, 8 to 20 years, on time scales ranging from daily to yearly UV sums. The standard deviations in the ratios of modeled to measured daily sums vary between 10 and 15%. The yearly sums agree within a 5% range. Depending on the availability of ancillary measurements, reconstructions have been carried out to the early 1960s. A method has been set up to educe one best estimate of the historical UV levels that takes into account the long-term stability and underlying agreement of the models, and the agreement with actual UV measurements. Using this best estimate, the yearly sums of erythemally weighted UV irradiance showed a range of 300 kJ/m(2) at 67 degrees N to 750 kJ/m(2) at 40 degrees N. The year-to-year variability was lowest at 40 degrees N with a relative variation of 4.3%; for central and northern European latitudes this year-to-year variation was 5.2 to 6.5%. With regard to the period 1980 to 2006, first-order trend lines range from 0.3 +/- 0.1 to 0.6 +/- 0.2% per year, approximately two thirds of which can be attributed to the diminishing of cloudiness and one third to ozone decline.

Tropospheric air trajectories that occurred during the Southern African Fire-Atmosphere Research Initiative (SAFARI) in August-October 1992 are described in terms of a circulation classification scheme and the vertical stability of the atmosphere. Three major and frequently occurring stable discontinuities are found to control vertical transport of aerosols in the subtropical atmosphere at the end of the dry season. Of these, the main subsidence-induced feature is a spatially ubiquitous and temporally persistent absolutely stable layer at an altitude of about 5 km (3.5 km above the interior plateau elevation). This effective obstacle to vertical mixing is observed to persist without break for up to 40 days. Below this feature an absolutely stable layer at 3 km (1.5 km above the surface) prevails on and off at the top of the surface mixing layer for up to 7 days at a time, being broken by the passage of regularly occurring westerly wave disturbances. Above the middle-level discontinuity a further absolutely stable layer is frequently discerned at an altitude of about 8 km. It is shown that five basic modes can be used to describe horizontal aerosol transportation fields over southern Africa. Dominating these is the anticyclone mode which results in frequent recirculation at spatial scales varying from hundreds to thousands of kilometers. In exiting the anticyclonic circulation, transport on the northern periphery of the system is to the west over the Atlantic Ocean via a semistationary easterly wave over the western part of the subcontinent. On the southern periphery, wave perturbations in the westerly enhance transports which exit the subcontinent to the east into the Indian Ocean. Independently derived data suggest that during SAFARI only 4% of the total transport of air from three locations south of 18 degrees 8 was into the Atlantic Ocean. Over 90% of the transport was into the Indian Ocean across 35 degrees E. This result reflects circulation fields typical of the extremely dry conditions prevailing in 1992. The integrated effect of the control exerted by atmospheric stability on vertical mixing, on the one hand, and the nature of the horizontal circulation fields, on the other, is to produce a distinctive suite of transport patterns that go a long way to explain the observed high concentrations of tropospheric aerosols and trace gases observed over the subcontinent in winter and spring, as well as over the tropical South Atlantic and southwestern Indian Oceans.

The sensitivity of direct shortwave radiative effects of dust (DRE) to assumed particle shape is investigated. Radiative transfer simulations are conducted using optical properties of either spheres, mass-equivalent spheroids (mass-conserving case), or (mass-equivalent) spheroids whose number concentration is modified so that they have the same midvisible optical thickness (tau(545 nm)) as spheres (tau-conserving case). The impact of particle shape on DRE is investigated for different dust particle effective radii, optical thickness of the dust cloud, solar zenith angle, and spectral surface albedo (ocean, grass, and desert). It is found that the influence of particle shape on the DRE is strongest over ocean. It also depends very strongly on the shape distribution of spheroids used, to a degree that the results for two distributions of spheroids may deviate more from each other than from those for spheres. Finally, the effects of nonsphericity largely depend on whether the mass- or tau-conserving case is considered. For example, when using a shape distribution of spheroids recommended in a recent study for approximating the single-scattering properties of dust, the DRE at the surface differs at most 5% from that from spherical particles in the mass-conserving case. This stems from compensating nonsphericity effects on optical thickness, asymmetry parameter, and single-scattering albedo. However, in the tau-conserving case, the negative DRE at the surface can be up to 15% weaker for spheroids than spheres.

[1] Time series data on Be-7, precipitation, temperature, and satellite imagery of cloud cover over Scandinavia, together with cosmic ray and sunspot activity, were used to elucidate the relationship between cosmic rays and clouds, and ultimately climate change. The results indicate a coherent negative correlation between total cloud cover and Be-7 on intraseasonal, seasonal, and decadal scales. Although the reasons behind this correlation are unclear, a full-scale implication of this feature is in the possible use of Be-7 and Be-10 records for proxy paleo-reconstruction of total cloud cover. This is a strongly needed, but generally difficult to quantify parameter in climate models.

This article presents SPARE-ICE, the Synergistic Passive Atmospheric Retrieval Experiment-ICE. SPARE-ICE is the first Ice Water Path (IWP) product combining infrared and microwave radiances. By using only passive operational sensors, the SPARE-ICE retrieval can be used to process data from at least the NOAA 15 to 19 and MetOp satellites, obtaining time series from 1998 onward. The retrieval is developed using collocations between passive operational sensors (solar, terrestrial infrared, microwave), the CloudSat radar, and the CALIPSO lidar. The collocations form a retrieval database matching measurements from passive sensors against the existing active combined radar-lidar product 2C-ICE. With this retrieval database, we train a pair of artificial neural networks to detect clouds and retrieve IWP. When considering solar, terrestrial infrared, and microwave-based measurements, we show that any combination of two techniques performs better than either single-technique retrieval. We choose not to include solar reflectances in SPARE-ICE, because the improvement is small, and so that SPARE-ICE can be retrieved both daytime and nighttime. The median fractional error between SPARE-ICE and 2C-ICE is around a factor 2, a figure similar to the random error between 2C-ICE ice water content (IWC) and in situ measurements. A comparison of SPARE-ICE with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Pathfinder Atmospheric Extended (PATMOS-X), and Microwave Surface and Precipitation Products System (MSPPS) indicates that SPARE-ICE appears to perform well even in difficult conditions. SPARE-ICE is available for public use.

Aimed at reducing deficiencies in representing the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) in general circulation models (GCMs), a global model evaluation project on vertical structure and physical processes of the MJO was coordinated. In this paper, results from the climate simulation component of this project are reported. It is shown that the MJO remains a great challenge in these latest generation GCMs. The systematic eastward propagation of the MJO is only well simulated in about one fourth of the total participating models. The observed vertical westward tilt with altitude of the MJO is well simulated in good MJO models but not in the poor ones. Damped Kelvin wave responses to the east of convection in the lower troposphere could be responsible for the missing MJO preconditioning process in these poor MJO models. Several process-oriented diagnostics were conducted to discriminate key processes for realistic MJO simulations. While large-scale rainfall partition and low-level mean zonal winds over the Indo-Pacific in a model are not found to be closely associated with its MJO skill, two metrics, including the low-level relative humidity difference between high- and low-rain events and seasonal mean gross moist stability, exhibit statistically significant correlations with the MJO performance. It is further indicated that increased cloud-radiative feedback tends to be associated with reduced amplitude of intraseasonal variability, which is incompatible with the radiative instability theory previously proposed for the MJO. Results in this study confirm that inclusion of air-sea interaction can lead to significant improvement in simulating the MJO.

Ten years of measurements of UV irradiance, monitored by the Robertson-Berger (RB) meter in Norrkoping, 58.58 degrees N, 16.15 degrees E, Sweden, have been combined with concurrent synoptic cloud observations, measurements of sunshine duration, and global radiation to establish the relative influence of clouds on UV irradiance. It is shown that the cloud effect for UV wavelengths is less than for the whole solar spectrum (global radiation). Relations retrieved for global radiation may be used by correcting for the differences. High-level clouds are more transparent than low- and medium-level clouds. As expected, it was found that precipitating clouds in general are more opaque than nonprecipitating clouds. If there is any solar elevation dependency in the effect of clouds, it is small. Using only total cloud amount as parameter to model, the cloud effect on UV irradiance will give a substantial uncertainty, which can be decreased considerably using cloud type and/or information on precipitation conditions. It has also been shown that sunshine duration can be used in a similar way as cloud covet.

A case study for feldspar aerosols is conducted to assess the errors introduced by simple model particles in radiance and flux simulations. The spectral radiance field and net flux are computed for a realistic phase function of feldspar aerosols measured in the laboratory at 633 nm. Results are compared to computations with spherical and spheroidal model particles. It is found that the use of spherical model particles introduces large spectral radiance errors at top of atmosphere (TOA) between -6 and 31%. Using a new shape parameterization of spheroids reduces the error range to -1 to 6%. Spherical model particles yield an absolute TOA spectral net flux error of -6.1 mW m(-2) nm(-1). An equiprobable shape distribution of spheroids results in only minor improvements, but the new shape parameterization yields an error of only -0.8 mW m(-2) nm(-1). A variation of the refractive index m reveals that the resulting changes in the TOA spectral net flux are slightly smaller than the error caused by assuming the particles to be spherical. However, the uncertainty of m is commonly considered the major error source in aerosol radiative forcing simulations, whereas the use of spherical model particles is often not seriously questioned. This study implies that this notion needs to be reconsidered. Should the relative spectral net flux errors be representative for the entire spectrum, then the use of spherical model particles may be among the major error sources in broadband flux simulations. The new spheroidal shape parameterization can, however, substantially improve the results.

A satellite-derived (NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) cloud climatology over the Scandinavian region covering the period 1991 - 2001 has been used to evaluate the performance of cloud simulations of the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute Rossby Centre regional climate model (RCA3). Several methods of adapting the satellite and model data sets to allow a meaningful comparison were applied. RCA3-simulated total cloud cover was shown to agree within a few percent of the satellite-retrieved cloud amounts on seasonal and annual timescales. However, a substantial imbalance between the respective RCA3 contributions from low-, medium- and high-level clouds was seen. The differences from satellite-derived contributions were +2.4% for high-level clouds, -5.2% for medium-level clouds and +4.0% for low- level clouds. In addition, an overrepresentation of cloud categories with high optical thicknesses was seen for all vertical cloud groups, particularly during the summer season. Some specific features of the geographical distribution of cloudiness were also noticed. Most pronounced were the excess of cloud amounts over the Scandinavian mountain range and a deficit leeward of the mountains. The overall results imply problems with the RCA3-modeled surface radiation budget components by causing reduced incoming solar radiation and increased downwelling longwave radiation.

Erythemal daily UV doses have been calculated using input data from the ERA-40 reanalysis for years 1958-2002. The quality of input parameters for UV calculations has been validated with available ground based total ozone data and estimates of Cloud Modification Factor (CMF), and the results have been compared with existing UV data. Owing to limited availability of validation data especially during 1960s and 1970s the analysis focused on sites located in central and northern Europe. The current work is the first step in deriving reliable long-term UV time series from the ERA-40 reanalysis. Total ozone from the ERA-40 reanalysis is affected by significant biases, especially before satellite ozone measurements were available for assimilation. Estimations of the effect of clouds on surface UV were made using global radiation (300-3000 nm) budgets at the surface because available ERA-40 cloud data do not allow good estimates of surface daily UV doses. There are some problems with ERA-40 solar radiation budgets which cause systematic biases in calculated daily UV doses. Comparison of calculated daily erythemal UV doses against ground-based UV data indicate that ERA-40 UV doses are typically overestimated by 6-18% in central and northern Europe and underestimated by 9-17% at Davos, Switzerland. Root-mean-square errors of the calculated daily UV doses are usually in the range of 30-40%. Trends of UV doses were calculated for the concurrent period of the TOMS satellite UV data (1979-2002). The trends of zonally averaged ERA-40 and TOMS UV agree well and are mostly of the same sign and magnitude.

Recent analysis of the total ozone observations indicate a negative trend of about 4%/decade in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes during the last two decades [WMO, 1999]. The effect of this decline on surface UV levels is of interest to a variety of applications. In this work the long-term variation of UV radiation at three stations located in northern Europe (Belsk, Norrkoping, and Jokioinen) has been studied using data from (1) ground-based observations, (2) surface UV doses determined using TOMS satellite measurements, and (3) reconstructed UV doses using observations of global radiation, total ozone, and radiative transfer modeling. For each station the estimates of daily UV doses from various sources have been intercompared, and a trend analysis has been performed to reveal long-term changes in the UV radiation. Data sets, which start in the late 1970s or early 1980s, show a general positive trend in annual doses of UV radiation. Some of these upward trends are statistically significant. For Belsk the increases are in the range of 5-15% per decade during spring and summer. The largest increases, about 20%/decade, has been observed in Norrkoping during spring. At Jokioinen there has been a slight upward trend in UV throughout the year. The analysis of reconstructed Belsk data from 1966 onward shows that the positive trend since late 1970s was preceeded by a negative trend. The reason for such changes is probably not only related to the changes in the total ozone but also to changes in aerosol content and cloudiness. The agreement of the UV series based on different data sources is good. This was studied using a subset of data in which it was required that data from all possible sources were available. The different trend estimates were in very close agreement with each other. However, there were often differences in absolute values, which is probably related to problems in calibration and limitations of the models.

Many theories for the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) focus on diabatic processes, particularly the evolution of vertical heating and moistening. Poor MJO performance in weather and climate models is often blamed on biases in these processes and their interactions with the large-scale circulation. We introduce one of the three components of a model evaluation project, which aims to connect MJO fidelity in models to their representations of several physical processes, focusing on diabatic heating and moistening. This component consists of 20day hindcasts, initialized daily during two MJO events in winter 2009-2010. The 13 models exhibit a range of skill: several have accurate forecasts to 20days lead, while others perform similarly to statistical models (8-11days). Models that maintain the observed MJO amplitude accurately predict propagation, but not vice versa. We find no link between hindcast fidelity and the precipitation-moisture relationship, in contrast to other recent studies. There is also no relationship between models' performance and the evolution of their diabatic heating profiles with rain rate. A more robust association emerges between models' fidelity and net moistening: the highest-skill models show a clear transition from low-level moistening for light rainfall to midlevel moistening at moderate rainfall and upper level moistening for heavy rainfall. The midlevel moistening, arising from both dynamics and physics, may be most important. Accurately representing many processes may be necessary but not sufficient for capturing the MJO, which suggests that models fail to predict the MJO for a broad range of reasons and limits the possibility of finding a panacea.

We present ozone loss estimated from airborne measurements taken during January-February and March in the Arctic winter 2002/2003. The first half of the winter was characterized by unusually cold temperatures and the second half by a major stratospheric sudden warming around 15-18 January 2003. The potential vorticity maps show a vortex split in the lower stratosphere during the major warming (MW) in late January and during the minor warming in mid-February due to wave 1 amplification. However, the warming can be termed as a vortex displacement event as there was no vortex split during the MW period at 10 hPa. Very low temperatures, large areas of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), and high chlorine activation triggered significant ozone loss in the early winter, as the vortex moved to the midlatitude regions. The ozone depletion derived from the ASUR measurements sampled inside the vortex, in conjunction with the Mimosa-Chim model tracer, shows a maximum of 1.3 +/- 0.2 ppmv at 450-500 K by late March. The partial column loss derived from the ASUR ozone profiles reaches up to 61 +/- 4 DU in 400-550 K in the same period. The evolution of ozone and ozone loss assessed from the ASUR measurements is in very good agreement with POAM observations. The reduction in ozone estimated from the POAM measurements shows a similar maximum of 1.3 +/- 0.2 ppmv at 400-500 K or 63 +/- 4 DU in 400-550 K in late March. Our study reveals that the Arctic winter 2002/2003 was unique as it had three minor warmings and a MW, yet showed large loss in ozone. No such feature was observed in any other Arctic winter in the 1989-2010 period. In addition, an unusually large ozone loss in December, around 0.5 +/- 0.2 ppmv at 450-500 K or 12 +/- 1 DU in 400-550 K, was estimated for the first time in the Arctic. A careful and detailed diagnosis with all available published results for this winter exhibits an average ozone loss of 1.5 +/- 0.3 ppmv at 450-500 K or 65 +/- 5 DU in 400-550 K by the end of March, which exactly matches the ozone depletion derived from the ASUR, POAM and model data. The early ozone loss together with considerable loss afterwards put the warm Arctic winter 2002/2003 amongst the moderately cold winters in terms of the significance of the ozone loss.

Irradiance measurements on a horizontal surface often deviate from theory where the irradiance is supposed to be proportional to the cosine of the angle of incidence. This discrepancy is known as the cosine error. In this paper, three different methods for cosine error correction are investigated. The simplest method is based on the assumption of an isotropic sky radiance distribution, regardless of sky conditions, and the irradiance is treated as a single component. In the second method the irradiance is divided into one direct solar and one diffuse sky component, where the latter is assumed to have an isotropic distribution. Finally, a third method also divides the irradiance into two components but under the assumption of an anisotropic sky radiance distribution. Irradiances under general sky conditions are found by interpolation between clear and overcast cases on the basis of sunshine duration or cloud cover. The three methods are applied to data from a Robertson-Berger sunburning meter located in Norrkoping, Sweden. Both methods, where the irradiance is divided into two components, produce acceptable and similar results, while the isotropic one-component method does not.

A method for reconstruction of past UV radiation has been developed. The idea of the method is to use measurements of global radiation (300 - 3000 nm) for determining the influence of clouds on UV radiation. In order to transfer the information contained in the global radiation data into a cloud effect in the UV range, a so-called cloud modification table was developed, which is based on physical relationships determined through radiative transfer calculations. The method was given as input the measured global radiation and total ozone column, the total water vapor column from the ERA-40 data set, the surface albedo as estimated from snow depth, and the altitude of the location. Using this method, erythemally weighted UV irradiances were reconstructed back to the early 1980s at four stations in northern Europe: Bergen in Norway, Norrkoping in Sweden, and Jokioinen and Sodankyla in Finland. The reconstructed daily UV doses are in good agreement with measurements. For the summer season, the systematic error was found to vary between 0% at Bergen and 4% at Jokioinen, and the correlation coefficient was 0.99 at all stations. The summer root-mean-square error was 5% at all stations except Jokioinen, where it was 9%. The method performs well also for spring and autumn, whereas for winter conditions of low Sun, a systematical underestimation was found. A large part of this underestimation was found to be due to the plane-parallel approximation used in the radiative transfer calculations. The time series of reconstructed UV exhibit a clear increase since the early 1980s at both Sodankyla " (4.1%/decade; statistically significant) and Norrkoping (3.3%/decade; not significant). At Jokioinen, a weak increase was found, while at Bergen there was no considerable overall change. At both Sodankyla and Norrkoping, the increase in the reconstructed UV radiation was primarily driven by an increase in the global radiation, that is, by decreased cloudiness. The method is general in the sense that it can be applied also to other stations.

The multidecadal variability of air-sea CO(2)fluxes in the North Atlantic under preindustrial atmospheric CO2 conditions is simulated, using a coupled biogeochemical/circulation model driven by long-term surface forcing reconstructed from the leading modes of sea level pressure observations from 1850 to 2000. Heat fluxes are of great importance for the multidecadal CO2 fluctuations, about equal in magnitude to wind stress, in contrast to their less prominent role for CO2 flux variability on interannual timescales. Another difference, compared to higher frequencies, is the dominance of the North Atlantic Oscillation in driving the variability of the air-sea CO2 fluxes. Two spatially distinct regimes lead to large anomalies in the CO2 fluxes but compensate to a large degree. The first regime is advective and has its clear signature southeast of Greenland while the second one, in the vicinity of the Labrador Sea and off Newfoundland, is convective. In both regimes, the multidecadal CO2 fluctuations are driven mainly by variations in temperature, salinity, and DIC content at the sea surface while the role of the biological pump is of minor importance in this particular model. The magnitude of the simulated multidecadal CO2 uptake changes is on the order of 0.02 Pg C/yr and amounts to 10-15% of the estimated annual anthropogenic CO2 uptake of the North Atlantic.

One of the critical parameters in assessing the global impacts of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) on cloud properties and the radiation budget is the estimation of phytoplankton-induced ocean emissions, which are derived from prescribed, climatological surface seawater DMS concentrations. The most widely used global ocean DMS climatology was published 15 years ago and has recently been updated using a much larger database of observations. The updated climatology displays significant differences in terms of the global distribution and regional monthly averages of sea surface DMS. In this study, we use the ECHAM5-HAMMOZ aerosol-chemistry-climate general circulation model to quantify the influence of the updated DMS climatology in computed atmospheric properties, namely, the spatial and temporal distributions of atmospheric DMS concentration, sulfuric acid concentration, sulfate aerosols, number of activated aerosols, cloud droplet number concentration, and the aerosol radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere. Significant differences are observed for all the modeled variables. Comparison with observations of atmospheric DMS and total sulfate also shows that in places with large DMS emissions, the updated climatology shows a better match with the observations. This highlights the importance of using the updated climatology for projecting future impacts of oceanic DMS emissions, especially considering that the relative importance of the natural sulfur fluxes is likely to increase due to legislation to clean up anthropogenic emissions. The largest estimated differences are in the Southern Ocean, Indian Ocean, and parts of the Pacific Ocean, where the climatologies differ in seasonal concentrations over large geographical areas. The model results also indicate that the former DMS climatology underestimated the effect of DMS on the globally averaged annual aerosol radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere by about 20%.

The shortwave radiative effect of an ice cloud observed over the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program's Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma is investigated. Airborne microphysical data from a cloud particle imager, optical array probes, and forward scattering probes are used to construct vertical profiles of the size and shape distributions of ice crystals. Due to uncertainties associated with measuring the sizes and shapes of small ice crystals with maximum dimensions less than 120 mu m, five alternate size-shape distributions are derived and combined with existing databases of wavelength-dependent single-scattering properties of idealized ice crystals to obtain vertical profiles of optical properties. The dependence of the surface and the top-of-the-atmosphere fluxes on these uncertainties is simulated with a radiative transfer model. In addition, surface fluxes are compared against measurements at the surface. It is found that the differences between the modeled and measured fluxes are too large to be explained by uncertainties in the shape and concentrations of small ice crystals. Sensitivity tests suggest that the discrepancies occur because the real optical thickness is larger than that derived from the aircraft profiles most of the time. When the optical thickness was derived based on modeled and measured direct fluxes, the modeled total downward flux agreed well with the measurements. Slightly (less than 10%) reducing the asymmetry parameter, which is possibly associated with the presence of surface roughness, air bubble inclusions or other nonidealities in ice crystals, may further improve the agreement with observations.

We analyze century-long daily temperature and precipitation records for stations in Europe west of 60 degrees E. A set of climatic indices derived from the daily series, mainly focusing on extremes, is defined. Linear trends in these indices are assessed over the period 1901-2000. Average trends, for 75 stations mostly representing Europe west of 20 degrees E, show a warming for all temperature indices. Winter has, on average, warmed more (similar to 1.0 degrees C/100 yr) than summer (similar to 0.8 degrees C), both for daily maximum (TX) and minimum (TN) temperatures. Overall, the warming of TX in winter was stronger in the warm tail than in the cold tail (1.6 and 1.5 degrees C for 98th and 95th, but similar to 1.0 degrees C for 2nd, 5th and 10th percentiles). There are, however, large regional differences in temperature trend patterns. For summer, there is a tendency for stronger warming, both for TX and TN, in the warm than in the cold tail only in parts of central Europe. Winter precipitation totals, averaged over 121 European stations north of 40 degrees N, have increased significantly by similar to 12% per 100 years. Trends in 90th, 95th and 98th percentiles of daily winter precipitation have been similar. No overall long-term trend occurred in summer precipitation totals, but there is an overall weak (statistically insignificant and regionally dependent) tendency for summer precipitation to have become slightly more intense but less common. Data inhomogeneities and relative sparseness of station density in many parts of Europe preclude more robust conclusions. It is of importance that new methods are developed for homogenizing daily data.

Monitoring the life cycle of convective rain cells requires a Lagrangian viewpoint where the observer moves with the dominant background flow. To adopt such a moving reference frame, we design, validate, and apply a simple rain cell tracking methodwhich we term iterative rain cell tracking (IRT)for spatio-temporal precipitation data. IRT iteratively identifies the formation and dissipation of rain cells and determines the large-scale flow. The iteration is repeated until reaching convergence. As validated using reanalysis wind speeds, repeated iterations lead to substantially increased agreement of the background flow field and an increased number of complete tracks. Our method is thereby able to monitor the growth and intensity profiles of rain cells and is applied to a high-resolution (5 min and 1x1 km(2)) data set of radar-derived rainfall intensities over Germany. We then combine this data set with surface temperature observations and synoptic observations to group tracks according to convective and stratiform conditions. Convective tracks show clear life cycles in intensity, with peaks shifted off-center toward the beginning of the track, whereas stratiform tracks have comparatively featureless intensity profiles. Our results show that the convective life cycle can lead to convection-dominating precipitation extremes at short time scales, while track-mean intensities may vary much less between the two types. The observed features become more pronounced as surface temperature increases, and in the case of convection even exceeded the rates expected from the Clausius-Clapeyron relation.

Ground-based GPS measurements can provide independent data for the assessment of climate models. We use the atmospheric integrated water vapor (IWV) obtained from GPS measurements at 99 European sites to evaluate the regional Rossby Centre Atmospheric climate model (RCA) driven at the boundaries by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data (ERA Interim). The GPS data were compared to the RCA simulation and the ERA Interim data. The comparison was first made using the monthly mean values. Averaged over the domain and the 14 years covered by the GPS data, IWV differences of about 0.47 kg/m(2) and 0.39 kg/m(2) are obtained for RCA-GPS and ECMWF-GPS, respectively. The RCA-GPS standard deviation is 0.98 kg/m(2) whereas it is 0.35 kg/m(2) for the ECMWF-GPS comparison. The IWV differences for RCA are positively correlated to the differences for ECMWF. However, this is not the case for two sites in Italy where a wet bias is seen for ECMWF, while a dry bias is seen for RCA, the latter being consistent with a cold temperature bias found for RCA in that region by other authors. Comparisons of the estimated diurnal cycle and the spatial structure function of the IWV were made between the GPS data and the RCA simulation. The RCA captures the geographical variation of the diurnal peak in the summer. Averaged over all sites, a peak at 17 local solar time is obtained from the GPS data while it appears later, at 18, in the RCA simulation. The spatial variation of the IWV obtained for an RCA run with a resolution of 11 km gives a better agreement with the GPS results than does the spatial variation from a 50 km resolution run. Citation: Ning, T., G. Elgered, U. Willen, and J. M. Johansson (2013), Evaluation of the atmospheric water vapor content in a regional climate model using ground-based GPS measurements, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, 329-339, doi: 10.1029/2012JD018053.

Wind speeds for a nominal height of 10 m and from the lowest model level (similar to 70 m above ground level) from the Rossby Center regional climate model (RCM) (RCA3) run at four resolutions between approximately 50 x 50 km and 6 x 6 km are analyzed to assess the effect of model resolution on wind climates. The influence of model resolution in this topographically simple subdomain of northern Europe is more profound in the wind extremes than in the central tendency. The domain-averaged mean wind speed at 10 m increases by 5% as the resolution increases from 50 to 6.25 km, while the 50 year return period wind speed and wind gust at this height increase by over 10% and 24%, respectively. Larger changes are observed in these wind speed metrics at the lowest model level as model resolution increases (similar to+10% in the mean and similar to+20% in the 50 year return period wind speed). These differences are of similar magnitude to the climate change signal in extreme wind events derived in prior research and may have implications for climate change risk and vulnerability analyses. Output from the lowest model level indicates some evidence for increased variability at synoptic and meso-alpha time scales with increased model resolution, but the effect is nonlinear. Furthermore, analysis of power spectra of grid cell average and tile fraction wind speeds at 10 m does not support the assertion that increased model resolution increases model skill at synoptic and meso-a time scales relative to in situ observations.

A statistical modeling approach is proposed for the simulation of local paleoclimatic proxy records using general circulation model (GCM) output, A method for model-consistent statistical downscaling to local weather conditions is developed which can be used as input for process-based proxy models in order to investigate to what extent climate variability obtained from proxy data can be represented by a GCM, and whether, for example, the response of glaciers to climatic change can be reproduced. Downscaling is based on a multiple linear forward regression model using daily sets of operational weather station data and large-scale predictors at various pressure levels obtained from reanalyses of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Composition and relative impact of predictors vary significantly for individual. stations within the area of investigation. Owing to a strong dependence on individual synoptic-scale patterns, daily data give the highest performance which can be further increased by developing seasonal-specific relationships. The model is applied to a long integration of a GCM coupled to a mixed layer ocean (ECHAM4/MLO) simulating present-day and preindustrial climate variability. Patterns of variability are realistically simulated compared to observed station data within an area of Norway for the period 1868-1993.

A Lagrangian approach has been used to assess the degree of chemically induced ozone loss in the Arctic lower stratosphere in winter 1991/1992. Trajectory calculations are used to identify air parcels probed by two ozonesondes at different points along the trajectories. A statistical analysis of the measured differences in ozone mixing ratio and the time the air parcel spent in sunlight between the measurements provides the chemical ozone loss. Initial results were first described by von der Gathen et al. [1995]. Here we present a more detailed description of the technique and a more comprehensive discussion of the results. Ozone loss rates of up to 10 ppbv per sunlit hour (or 54 ppbv per day) were found inside the polar vortex on the 475 K potential temperature surface (about 19.5 km in altitude) at the end of January. The period of rapid ozone loss coincides and slightly lags a period when temperatures were cold enough for type I polar stratospheric clouds to form. It is shown that the ozone loss occurs exclusively during the sunlit portions of the trajectories. The time evolution and vertical distribution of the ozone loss rates are discussed.

The paper presents a new global modeling tool, Stratospheric Chemical Transport Model 2. It has been developed for effective three-dimensional multiyear stratospheric chemistry studies, featuring an extensive chemistry scheme, heterogeneous processing on sulfate aerosols, and some polar stratospheric cloud processes. The transport algorithm maintains sub-grid-scale distributions and connects vertically the stratospheric layers, even in a coarse vertical grid. The model has been integrated for 49 months, recycling 1 year of precalculated transport from a middle atmosphere general circulation model. One year of daily National Centers for Environmental Prediction global analyses are used as temperatures. Diurnal cycles of photolysis rates are recalculated every 7 days to give interaction with ozone changes. The model is able to describe most of the geographical and seasonal ozone variability and the meridional distributions of ozone, reactive nitrogen, chlorine, and bromine. Stratospheric diurnal cycles for nitrogen, hydrogen, chlorine, and bromine species are captured in detail. The upper stratosphere ozone deficiency, typical to models, is large. Its sensitivity to different ways of tuning are explored. Midlatitude, rather than polar, wintertime processes have so far been the focus in this model tool. The present transport and grid resolution are not suited for realistic simulations at high latitudes. As there is only a limited inclusion of polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) microphysics, chemical processing in the cold polar lower stratosphere also cannot be well simulated. For example, the Antarctic ozone hole is not simulated, but the modeled chemistry should be suitable for warm Arctic winters when type II PSCs and particle sedimentation do not occur.

Thirty-three snowpack models of varying complexity and purpose were evaluated across a wide range of hydrometeorological and forest canopy conditions at five Northern Hemisphere locations, for up to two winter snow seasons. Modeled estimates of snow water equivalent (SWE) or depth were compared to observations at forest and open sites at each location. Precipitation phase and duration of above-freezing air temperatures are shown to be major influences on divergence and convergence of modeled estimates of the subcanopy snowpack. When models are considered collectively at all locations, comparisons with observations show that it is harder to model SWE at forested sites than open sites. There is no universal "best'' model for all sites or locations, but comparison of the consistency of individual model performances relative to one another at different sites shows that there is less consistency at forest sites than open sites, and even less consistency between forest and open sites in the same year. A good performance by a model at a forest site is therefore unlikely to mean a good model performance by the same model at an open site (and vice versa). Calibration of models at forest sites provides lower errors than uncalibrated models at three out of four locations. However, benefits of calibration do not translate to subsequent years, and benefits gained by models calibrated for forest snow processes are not translated to open conditions.

A new scheme that solves the advection-diffusion equation for tracers in a spectral General Circulation Model (GCM) is presented. The main ideas are (1) using a monotonic and smooth functional of the tracer as prognostic variable to ensure positive definite concentrations and continuity of all derivatives and (2) defining an adjustable tracer-mass correction as a multiplication of the tracer in grid space, giving rise to an efficient correction in spectral space. Common standard benchmark tests for two-dimensional horizontal advection using deformational wind fields show that the new scheme is accurate and essentially not diffusive. A three-dimensional test is proposed in order to validate vertical transport. Additionally to standard error norms and global tracer mass, the entropy of mixing is introduced as another conservation constraint and utilized to determine the strength of the mass correction which is a free parameter. The transport scheme is applied in a mechanistic spectral GCM from the surface to the lower thermosphere. It is extended such that the mass correction takes the diffusion and other nonconservative effects explicitly into account. By this method we estimate the mean age of air along with its dependence on the turbulent horizontal Schmidt number.

Monthly clear-sky anomalies of atmospheric temperature and water vapor over the East Siberian and Laptev Sea regions of the Arctic for 2003-2010 are examined here. This region experiences significant interannual variations in sea ice concentration and is also where ice loss was most apparent in the record year 2007. Clear-sky thermodynamic profiles come from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) sensor onboard the Aqua satellite. Associated longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW) radiation-flux anomalies are estimated through radiative transfer modeling. Anomalies of temperature (+/- 10 K) and water vapor (+/- 1 g kg(-1)) often positively covary, resulting in distinct signatures in the clear-sky downwelling LW (LWD) anomalies, occasionally larger than +/- 10 W m(-2) around the 2003-2010 climatology. Estimates of mean greenhouse anomalies indicate a shift from negative to positive anomalies midway through the 8-year record. Sensitivity tests suggest that temperature anomalies are the strongest contributor to both LWD and greenhouse anomalies, relative to water-vapor anomalies; monthly averaging of column precipitable water yields relatively small anomalies (order 1 mm) that produce a linear response in greenhouse anomalies. Finally the clear-sky contribution to 2007 monthly ice thickness is estimated. Anomalous clear-sky radiation retards the total 2007 ice thickness by 0.3 m (15-30% of ice-thickness climatology), and anomalous LW radiation is most important for preconditioning the ice during the months prior to, and after, the summer melt season. A highly sensitive interaction between cloud fraction, surface albedo and LWD anomalies is found, and we develop a metric for determining clear-sky anomalous ice melt potential.

Two episodes of long-range aerosol transport (4000 km) from southern Africa into the central tropical South Atlantic are documented. Stable nitrogen isotope analysis, multielemental analysis, and meteorological observations on local and regional scales are used to describe the observed surface aerosol chemistry during these transport episodes. The chemical, kinematic, and thermodynamic analyses suggest that for the central tropical South Atlantic, west Africa between 0 degrees and 10 degrees S is the primary air mass source region (over 50%) during austral spring. Over 70% of all air arriving in the lower and middle troposphere in the central tropical South Atlantic comes from a broad latitudinal band extending from 20 degrees S to 10 degrees N. Air coming from the east subsides and is trapped below the midlevel and trade wind inversion layers. Air from the west originates at higher levels (500 hPa) and contributes less than 30% of the air masses arriving in the central tropical South Atlantic. The source types of aerosols and precursor trace gases extend over a broad range of biomes from desert and savanna to the rain forest. During austral spring, over this broad region, processes include production from vegetation, soils, and biomass burning. The aerosol composition of air masses over and the atmospheric chemistry of the central South Atlantic is a function of the supply of biogenic, biomass burning, and aeolian emissions from tropical Africa. Rainfall is a common controlling factor for all three sources. Rain, in turn, is governed by the large-scale circulations which show pronounced interannual variability. The field measurements were taken in an extremely dry year and reflect the circulation and transport fields typical of these conditions.

We performed simulations of future biophysical vegetation-climate feedbacks with a regional Earth System Model, RCA-GUESS, interactively coupling a regional climate model and a process-based model of vegetation dynamics and biogeochemistry. Simulated variations in leaf area index and in the relative coverage of evergreen forest, deciduous forest, and open land vegetation in response to simulated climate influence atmospheric state via variations in albedo, surface roughness, and the partitioning of the land-atmosphere heat flux into latent and sensible components. The model was applied on a similar to 50 x 50 km grid over Europe under a future climate scenario. Three potential "hot spots" of vegetation-climate feedbacks could be identified. In the Scandinavian Mountains, reduced albedo resulting from the snow-masking effect of forest expansion enhanced the winter warming trend. In central Europe, the stimulation of photosynthesis and plant growth by "CO2 fertilization" mitigated warming, through a negative evapotranspiration feedback associated with increased vegetation cover and leaf area index. In southern Europe, increased summer dryness restricted plant growth and survival, causing a positive warming feedback through reduced evapotranspiration. Our results suggest that vegetation-climate feedbacks over the European study area will be rather modest compared to the radiative forcing of increased global CO2 concentrations but may modify warming projections locally, regionally, and seasonally, compared with results from traditional "off-line" regional climate models lacking a representation of the relevant feedback mechanisms.

[1] Observed monthly mean cloud cover from the SHEBA site is found to differ by a substantial amount during winter depending on cloud observing instrument. This makes it difficult for climate modelers to evaluate modeled clouds and improve parameterizations. Many instruments and human observers cannot properly detect the thinnest clouds and count them as clear sky instead, resulting in too low cloud cover. To study the impact from the difficulties in the detection of thin clouds, we compute cloud cover in our model with a filter that removes the thinnest clouds. Optical thickness is used as a proxy to identify thin clouds as we are mainly interested in the impact of clouds on radiation. With the results from a regional climate model simulation of the Arctic, we can reproduce the large variability in wintertime cloud cover between instruments when assuming different cloud detection thresholds. During winter a large fraction of all clouds are optically thin, which causes the large sensitivity to filtering by optical thickness. During summer, most clouds are far above the optical thickness threshold and filtering has no effect. A fair comparison between observed and modeled cloud cover should account for thin clouds that may be present in models but absent in the observational data set. Difficulties with the proper identification of clouds and clear sky also has an effect on cloud radiative forcing. The derived clear-sky longwave flux at the surface can vary by some W m(-2) depending on the lower limit for the optical thickness of clouds. This impacts on the "observed'' LW cloud radiative forcing and suggests great care is needed in using satellite-derived cloud radiative forcing for model development.

An analysis of diabatic heating and moistening processes from 12 to 36h lead time forecasts from 12 Global Circulation Models are presented as part of the Vertical structure and physical processes of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) project. A lead time of 12-36h is chosen to constrain the large-scale dynamics and thermodynamics to be close to observations while avoiding being too close to the initial spin-up of the models as they adjust to being driven from the Years of Tropical Convection (YOTC) analysis. A comparison of the vertical velocity and rainfall with the observations and YOTC analysis suggests that the phases of convection associated with the MJO are constrained in most models at this lead time although the rainfall in the suppressed phase is typically overestimated. Although the large-scale dynamics is reasonably constrained, moistening and heating profiles have large intermodel spread. In particular, there are large spreads in convective heating and moistening at midlevels during the transition to active convection. Radiative heating and cloud parameters have the largest relative spread across models at upper levels during the active phase. A detailed analysis of time step behavior shows that some models show strong intermittency in rainfall and differences in the precipitation and dynamics relationship between models. The wealth of model outputs archived during this project is a very valuable resource for model developers beyond the study of the MJO. In addition, the findings of this study can inform the design of process model experiments, and inform the priorities for field experiments and future observing systems.