This research incorporates the correlated k distribution BCC-RAD radiation model into the climate model BCC_AGCM2.0.1 and examines the change in climate simulation by implementation of the new radiation algorithm. It is shown that both clear-sky radiation fluxes and cloud radiative forcings (CRFs) are improved. The modeled atmospheric temperature and specific humidity are also improved due to changes in radiative heating rates, which most likely stem from the revised treatment of gaseous absorption. Subgrid cloud variability, including vertical overlap of fractional clouds and horizontal inhomogeneity in cloud condensate, is addressed by using the Monte Carlo Independent Column Approximation (McICA) method. In McICA, a cloud-type-dependent function for cloud fraction decorrelation length, which gives zonal mean results very close to the observations of CloudSat/CALIPSO, is developed. Compared to utilizing a globally constant decorrelation length, the maximum changes in seasonal CRFs by the new scheme can be as large as 10 and 20 W m⁻² for longwave (LW) and shortwave (SW) CRFs, respectively, mostly located in the tropics. The inclusion of an observation-based horizontal inhomogeneity of cloud condensate has also a significant impact on CRFs, with global means of ~ 1.5 W m⁻² and ~ 3.7 Wm⁻² for LW and SW CRFs at the top of atmosphere (TOA), respectively. Generally, incorporating McICA and horizontal inhomogeneity of cloud condensate in the BCC-RAD model reduces global mean TOA and surface SW and LW flux biases in BCC_AGCM2.0.1. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the new model configuration to be used in BCC_AGCM2.0.1 for climate simulations, and also indicate that more detailed real-world information on cloud structures should be obtained to constrain cloud settings in McICA in the future.

Black carbon (BC) particles become hydrophilic after mixing with soluble matter in the atmosphere, and their optical and radiative properties can be significantly modified accordingly. This study investigates the impact of aggregate structure on optical and radiative properties of aged BC, that is, BC coated by sulfate or organic aerosols, especially during hygroscopic growth. A more realistic BC morphology based on fractal aggregates is considered, and inhomogeneous mixtures of BC aggregates are treated more realistically (with respect to particle geometries) in the multiple sphere T‐matrix method for optical property simulations. As relative humidity increases, BC extinction is significantly enhanced due to an increase in scattering, and the enhancement depends on the amount and hydrophilicity of the coating. The absorption exhibits less variation during hygroscopic growth because the coating of aerosols already leads to BC absorption close to the maximum. Furthermore, hygroscopic growth not only results in negative radiative forcing (RF) at the top of the atmosphere but also slightly weakens the absorption in the atmosphere (inducing a negative RF in the atmosphere). Compared to the more realistic model with BC as aggregates, the currently popular core‐shell model reasonably approximates the top of the atmosphere RF but underestimates the atmospheric RF due to hygroscopic growth by up to 40%. Furthermore, for the RF caused by internal mixing, the core‐shell model overestimates the RFs at the surface and in the atmosphere by ~10%.

Though the single-layer solutions have been found for the δ-four-stream spherical harmonic expansion method (SHM) in radiative transfer, there is lack of a corresponding doubling–adding method (4SDA), which enables the calculation of radiative transfer through a vertically inhomogeneous atmosphere with multilayers. The doubling–adding method is based on Chandrasekhar's invariance principle, which was originally developed for discrete ordinates approximation. It is shown that the invariance principle can also be applied to SHM and δ-four-stream spherical harmonic expansion doubling–adding method (δ-4SDA) is proposed in this paper. The δ-4SDA method has been systematically compared to the δ-Eddington doubling–adding method (δ-2SDA), the δ-two-stream discrete ordinates doubling–adding method (δ-2DDA), and δ-four-stream discrete ordinates doubling–adding method (δ-4DDA). By applying δ-4SDA to a realistic atmospheric profile with gaseous transmission considered, it is found that the accuracy of δ-4SDA is superior to δ-2SDA or δ-2DDA, especially for the cloudy/aerosol conditions. It is shown that the relative errors of δ-4SDA are generally less than 1% in both heating rate and flux, while the relative errors of both δ-2SDA and δ-2DDA can be over 6%. Though δ-4DDA is slightly more accurate than δ-4SDA in heating rates, both of them are accurate enough to obtain the cloud-top solar heating. Here δ-4SDA is superior to δ-4DDA in computational efficiency. It is found that the error of aerosol radiative forcing can be up to 3 W m−2 by using δ-2SDA at the top of the atmosphere (TOA); such error is substantially reduced by applying δ-4SDA. In view of the overall accuracy and computational efficiency, δ-4SDA is suitable for application in climate models.

Although single-layer solutions have been obtained for the δ-four-stream discrete ordinates method (DOM) in radiative transfer, a four-stream doubling–adding method (4DA) is lacking, which enables us to calculate the radiative transfer through a vertically inhomogeneous atmosphere with multiple layers. In this work, based on the Chandrasekhar invariance principle, an analytical method of δ-4DA is proposed. When applying δ-4DA to an idealized medium with specified optical properties, the reflection, transmission, and absorption are the same if the medium is treated as either a single layer or dividing it into multiple layers. This indicates that δ-4DA is able to solve the multilayer connection properly in a radiative transfer process. In addition, the δ-4DA method has been systematically compared with the δ-two-stream doubling–adding method (δ-2DA) in the solar spectrum. For a realistic atmospheric profile with gaseous transmission considered, it is found that the accuracy of δ-4DA is superior to that of δ-2DA in most of cases, especially for the cloudy sky. The relative errors of δ-4DA are generally less than 1% in both the heating rate and flux, while the relative errors of δ-2DA can be as high as 6%.

A new scheme is proposed for using the variational iteration method (VIM) to solve the problem of infrared radiative transfer in a scattering medium. This scheme allows the zeroth-order solution to be identified as the absorption approximation and the scattering effect is included in the first-order iteration. The upward and downward intensities are calculated separately in VIM, which simplifies the calculation process. By applying VIM to two single-layer scattering media and a full radiation algorithm with gaseous transmission, it is found that VIM is generally more accurate than the discrete-ordinates method (DOM), especially for cirrostratus. Computationally, VIM is slightly faster than DOM in the two-stream case but more than twice as fast in the four-stream case. In view of its high overall accuracy and computational efficiency, VIM is well suited to solving infrared radiative transfer in climate models.

The Canadian Atmospheric Model version 5 (CanAM5) is the component of Canadian Earth System Model version 5 (CanESM5) which models atmospheric processes and coupling of the atmosphere with land and lake models. Described in this paper are the main features of CanAM5, with a focus on changes relative to the last major scientific version of the model (CanAM4). These changes are mostly related to improvements in radiative transfer, clouds, and aerosol parameterizations, as well as a major upgrade of the land surface and land carbon cycle models and addition of a small lake model. In addition to changes to parameterizations and models, changes in the adjustable parameters between CanAM4 and CanAM5 are documented. Finally, the mean climatology simulated by CanAM5 for the present day is evaluated against observations and compared with that simulated by CanAM4. Although many of the aspects of the simulated climate are similar between CanAM4 and CanAM5, there is a reduction in precipitation and temperature biases over the Amazonian basin, global cloud fraction biases, and solar and thermal cloud radiative effects, all of which are improvements relative to observations.