CliMA / ClimaCoupler.jl

ClimaCoupler: bringing atmosphere, land, and ocean together
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Implement a more realistic ocean surface albedo #577

Closed szy21 closed 6 months ago

szy21 commented 9 months ago

Currently, the ocean surface albedo is assumed to be a constant (0.06). In reality, the ocean surface albedo depends on the solar zenith angle and surface slope (which depends on the wind speed). See Cox and Munk for a good overview. The figure shows the ocean surface albedo derived from ~20 year average surface radiative fluxes from CERES EBAF (mean clear-sky upward SW / mean clear-sky downward SW at the surface, i.e., insolation weighted albedo). It would be good to implement a more realistic ocean surface albedo. image

Short-term solution: Use a simple function of solar zenith angle and surface slope, fitted to observations.

Long-term solution (can be turned into an SDI later):

tapios commented 9 months ago

I think a good path forward here may be this:

szy21 commented 8 months ago

The regression formula for albedo has been implemented. We still need to compare the results with observations. The current scheme we have may suffice for the near future. I'll move the more principle scheme to a separate issue and we can tackle that later.

szy21 commented 6 months ago

Here is ~200-day average clear sky albedo from this build image. The values are a bit too large compared to observations, especially at higher latitudes, but the overall pattern looks good. It is not plotting the same time period, and I think we can tune some parameters to match observations better, so I will close this issue for now. I will open a new issue for the more principled scheme when we plan to do it.