Top-of-Atmosphere Radiation Budget and Cloud Radiative Effects Over the Tibetan Plateau and Adjacent Monsoon Regions From CMIP6 Simulations

This study investigates the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiation budget (R-T) and cloud radiative effects (CREs) over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and adjacent Asian monsoon regions including Eastern China (EC) and South Asia (SA) using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6) simulations. Considerable simulation biases occur but specific causes differ in these regions. Most models underestimate the intensity of annual mean R-T and cloud radiative cooling effect over the TP, and the R-T during the cold-warm transition period is hard to capture. The biases in surface temperature and cloud fractions substantially contribute to cloud-radiation biases over the western and eastern TP, respectively. Over EC, the intensity of R-T and cloud radiative cooling effect is seriously underestimated especially in the springtime when the model spread is large, and their biases are closely related to less low-middle cloud fractions and weaker ascending motion. Over SA, simulation biases mainly arise from longwave radiative components associated with less high cloud fraction and weaker convection, with the large model spread in the summertime. The annual cycles of R-T and CREs over EC and SA can be well reproduced by most models, while the summertime peak of the net CRE over the TP occurs later than the observation. The R-T and its simulation bias strongly depend on the cloud radiative cooling effect over EC and SA. Our results demonstrate that contemporary climate models still have obvious difficulties in representing various complex cloud-radiation processes in Asian monsoon regions.

Automated summary

This study reveals that contemporary climate models still face significant challenges in accurately representing complex cloud-radiation processes in Asian monsoon regions.