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Abstract The vertical profile of clear-sky radiative cooling places important constraints on the vertical structure of convection and associated clouds. Simple theory using the cooling-to-space approximation is presented to indicate that the cooling rate in the upper troposphere should increase with surface temperature. The theory predicts how the cooling rate depends on lapse rate in an atmosphere where relative humidity remains approximately a fixed function of temperature. Radiative cooling rate is insensitive to relative humidity because of cancellation between the emission and transmission of radiation by water vapor. This theory is tested with one-dimensional radiative transfer calculations and radiative-convective equilibrium simulations. For climate simulations that produce an approximately moist adiabatic lapse rate, the radiative cooling profile becomes increasingly top-heavy with increasing surface temperature. If the temperature profile warms more slowly than a moist adiabatic profile in mid-troposphere, then the cooling rate in the upper troposphere is reduced and that in the lower troposphere is increased. This has important implications for convection, clouds and associated deep and shallow circulations.
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This content will become publicly available on December 16, 2026
Explaining the transient and equilibrium longwave feedback with moist adiabatic theory and its deviations
Abstract Reliable estimates of climate sensitivity require understanding how patterns of surface temperature change influence the global radiative feedback. Here we present a theoretical basis for this pattern effect as it relates to the longwave clear sky feedback. A moist adiabatic feedback framework is developed that partitions the feedback into components associated with locally determined moist adiabatic processes and components associated with deviations therefrom, such as due to nonlocal influences and relative humidity changes. Applying this feedback framework to simulations forced by transient and equilibrium patterns of sea surface temperature change reveals that the pattern effect is driven by different physical processes in different geographic regions. In the subtropics, the more stabilizing feedback under transient climate change is explained by a more negative relative humidity feedback. Over the Southern Ocean, the less stabilizing feedback under transient climate change occurs due to the muted surface warming there, which promotes a weak surface temperature feedback; furthermore, for an idealized pattern of change in which the transient sea surface temperature change is uniformly increased but retains the same structure, the pattern effect essentially disappears. The moist adiabatic feedback framework demonstrates that the evolving zonal-mean longwave clear sky feedback—towards stabilization at high latitudes and destabilization at low latitudes, as the climate approaches equilibrium—is controlled by processes, specifically surface temperature and relative humidity feedbacks, not isolated by conventional feedback analysis. In the global mean, the destabilization effect proves larger, receiving additional contributions from small but geographically extensive differences in the fixed-relative humidity atmospheric temperature feedback.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2311541
- PAR ID:
- 10655598
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Meteorological Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Climate
- ISSN:
- 0894-8755
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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