Window region infrared radiation transfer through clouds and the sensitivity of cloud parameters to radiative effects

The effects due to the passage of i.r. radiation through clouds are predominantly due to the window region spectrum (between 8 and 13 μm). An approximation scheme is used to identify those parameters in the cloud model that determine the heating and cooling effects and the sensitivity of these effects to the variations in the parameters. The results show that the anomalously large heating/cooling effects predicted by the exact calculations are actually a consequence of the choice of a homogeneous liquid water content profile and that an adjustment in this profile results in a lessening of these effects. The radiative effects are also found to be dependent on the size distribution in a nontrivial fashion. In particular, it is found that the use of bimodal distributions, a characteristic feature of clouds with entrainment, results in a lowering of the heating and cooling effects, even with a homogeneous vertical profile, to values more realistic than those obtained with monomodal distributions.