Tropical Sensitivity of a Coupled Model to Specified ISCCP Low Clouds

The seasonal cycle of SST observed in the eastern equatorial Pacific is poorly simulated by many oceanatmosphere coupled GCMs. This deficiency may be partly due to an incorrect prediction of tropical marine stratocumulus (MSc). To explore this hypothesis, two basic multiyear simulations have been performed using a coupled GCM with seasonally varying solar radiation. The model's cloud prediction scheme, which underpredicts tropical marine stratocumulus, is used for all clouds in the control run. In contrast, in the ''ISCCP'' run, the climatological monthly mean low cloud fraction is specified over the open ocean, utilizing C2 data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP). In this manner, the treatment of MSc clouds, including the annual cycle, is more realistic than in previous sensitivity studies.