Numerical Experiments of an Advanced Radiative Transfer Model in the U.S. Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System

A high-order accurate radiative transfer (RT) model developed by Fu and Liou has been implemented into the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) to improve the energy budget and forecast skill. The Fu–Liou RT model is a four-stream algorithm (with a two-stream option) integrating over 6 shortwave bands and 12 longwave bands. The experimental 10-day forecasts and analyses from data assimilation cycles are compared with the operational output, which uses a two-stream RT model of three shortwave and five longwave bands, for both winter and summer periods. The verifications against observations of radiosonde and surface data show that the new RT model increases temperature accuracy in both forecasts and analyses by reducing mean bias and root-mean-square errors globally. In addition, the forecast errors also grow more slowly in time than those of the operational NOGAPS because of accumulated effects of more accurate cloud–radiation interactions. The impact of parameterized cloud effective radius in estimating liquid and ice water optical properties is also investigated through a sensitivity test by comparing with the cases using constant cloud effective radius to examine the temperature changes in response to cloud scattering and absorption. The parameterization approach is demonstrated to outperform that of constant radius by showing smaller errors and better matches to observations. This suggests the superiority of the new RT model relative to its operational counterpart, which does not use cloud effective radius. An effort has also been made to improve the computational efficiency of the new RT model for operational applications.