Radiative properties of nonuniform clouds

Reported here are results from two experiments for the Atmospheric Radiation Monitoring (ARM) Program. The first experiment is mechanistic in character and focuses on testing general circulation models (GCMs) parameterization of cloud radiative properties. In this experiment, Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) measurements of solar flux and integrated liquid water content are used to obtain an empirical relationship between the diffuse transmission of stratus clouds and the liquid water path (LWP). The second experiment is a prototype of a set of experiments exploring broad climatological relations between radiative properties of the atmosphere and other key atmospheric parameters, both as a general test of parameterizations and as a way of introducing new diagnostic analysis procedures which can be used to test global climate models. First efforts evaluate a simple graybody relationship between the downwelling longwave flux at the surface, the outgoing longwave flux at the top of the atmosphere, and the column integrated water vapor content