Other
Scientific paper
Dec 1992
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992p%26ss...40.1585m&link_type=abstract
Planetary and Space Science, Volume 40, Issue 12, p. 1585-1597.
Other
3
Scientific paper
A simple one-dimensional model is presented to describe the energy budget of the tropical atmosphere. Heating of the atmosphere is associated primarily with latent energy released due to precipitation in localized regions of intense cumulonimbus activity. Air transported to upper regions of the troposphere by cumulonimbus systems is returned to the surface over a large region of descent. Heat released by subsidence is balanced primarily by emission of radiation in the infrared. The model accounts for this energy balance, exploring specifically the constraints on permissible fluxes of mass and energy.
Results suggest that the strength of the background subsidence field in the tropics may be sensitive to surface temperature and to changes in atmospheric composition, specifically variations in the altitude distribution of H2O and changes in the abundance of greenhouse gases such as CO2. The mean level of detrainment of deep cumulonimbus clouds is found to increase with increasing surface temperature. This behavior is shown to be sensitive to atmospheric composition. The surface temperature for an atmosphere containing twice the present level of CO2 is predicted to increase by 1.4K, about 25% less than the change obtained with models in which the lapse rate of temperature is specified at lower altitudes, where assumptions of radiative equilibrium would lead otherwise to a statically unstable condition.
Buoyancy considerations suggest that there may be an upper limit to the range of permissible values for surface temperature in the tropics. Models in which the subsidence mass flux is assumed constant with respect to altitude are found to be unable to maintain buoyancy for rising air in the face of heat released by descent when surface temperatures exceed about 312K.
McElroy Michael B.
Minschwaner Kenneth
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