How does the lifetime of cirrus detrained from deep convection impact the cloud radiative effect of the tropics?

Large cirrus outflows detrained from deep convection play a vital role in modulating the radiative balance of the Earth’s atmosphere. The total cloud radiative effect (CRE) in the tropics is close to zero due to a cancellation between a large shortwave (SW) cooling from optically thick clouds and a longwave (LW) warming from high-altitude thin cirrus that spread over much of the tropics. Any small percentage changes to the LW or SW components of these large detrained cirrus in a future climate could, therefore, have significant impacts on the overall CRE in the tropics.

A crucial question is how the lifetime of these detrained cirrus impacts the total cloud radiative effects in the tropics. Characterising the detrained cirrus outflows, how they evolve over time, and how they might change in a future climate is vital in order to understand their role in the climate system and to constrain past and future climate change.

Building on the ‘Time Since Convection’ product used in Horner & Gryspeerdt (2023), this work investigates how the initial conditions of deep convection influence the radiative evolution and lifetime of the detrained cirrus. If we extend the lifetime of detrained cirrus, how does this change their total radiative effect and the radiative balance in the tropics? To answer this question, data from the DARDAR, ISCCP, and CERES products are used to build a composite picture of the radiative and microphysical properties of the clouds, which are investigated under varying initial conditions.

It is found that the initial conditions of the convection, in particular whether the convection occurs over land or ocean, play an important role in determining the lifetime and total CRE of the detrained cirrus clouds, due to the strong diurnal contrasts in convection over ocean and land. Furthermore, it is found that artificially extending the lifetime of the detrained cirrus increases the total CRE of high clouds in the tropics in all cases.