Diagnostic Codes

Catalogue

Online publication of the CFMIP Diagnostics Code Catalogue paper as a discussion paper (21/04/2017)

A CFMIP cloud diagnostics code catalogue introduces cloud metrics/diagnostics which also provides programs to calculate them. The metrics/diagnostics introduced here are published in papers which include results of multi-model analysis. For the moment most of them are based on the outputs from COSP, but any metrics/diagnostics related to clouds are welcome. By setting up this catalogue we would like to encourage climate modelling and diagnostic groups to both use the existing metrics and to provide additional relevant codes. To find out more about how to contribute, please contact yoko.tsushima (at) metoffice.gov.uk.

Codes for each metric/diagnostic are managed in a repository in GitHub. Available links to repositories for each metrics/diagnostics are listed below.

• Green's function (Zhou et al., 2017)

• Approximate Partial Radiative Perturbation (APRP) calculation (Taylor et al., 2007)

• Cloud radiative kernels (Zelinka et al., 2012) Cloud feedback decomposition into components (Zelinka et al., 2013, 2016) added

• Snow albedo feedback (Hall and Qu, 2006, Qu and Hall, 2014)

• Simulation of ISCCP global cloud amounts (Klein et al., 2013)

• Cloud Regime Error Metric (CREM) (Williams and Webb, 2009, Tsushima et al., 2012)

• Zonal plots of GCM cloud and hydrometeor fraction compared with CALIPSO-GOCCP and CloudSat (Nam and Quaas, 2012)

• A-train satellite instantaneous cloud property observations for process-oriented evaluation (CALIPSO-PARASOL) (Konsta et al., 2015)

• Low-level cloud distribution and optical properties: CALIPSO, Parasol, CERES (Nam et al., 2012)

• Warm rain microphysical process diagrams (Suzuki et al. 2015)

• Sensitivity of Tropical Low-Cloud Reflection to surface temperature change at various time scales (Brient and Schneider, 2016)

• Sensitivities of low cloud cover to estimated inversion strength and sea surface temperature (Qu et al., 2014)

• Lower Tropospheric Mixing Indices (Sherwood et al., 2014)

If you want to know a bit more, please contact yoko.tsushima (at) metoffice.gov.uk.

Users Group and Registration

You do not need to register to download these diagnostics codes, but we encourage you to register so that we can keep track of the number of users and provide you with information on updates. If you download diagnostics codes, we would kindly request you to send an e-mail to yoko.tsushima (at) metoffice.gov.uk with the following information:

1. Name of your organisation and group.

2. Name of the contact person using the CFMIP-diagnostic in this group.

3. Name of the repository which you download diagnostics codes.

4. Type of research activity (if any) of this group (climate, NWP, CRM, Earth Observation, etc).

5. Name of the models to which CFMIP diagnostic will be applied.

We would also encourage you to subscribe to the CFMIP users Google group. You can do this in two different ways:

• Send an e-mail to mark.webb (at) metoffice.gov.uk requesting an invitation, or

• visit the cfmip-user Google group web, click on the link "Apply for group membership", and follow the instructions.

Development, Registration and Developers group

Enhancement/Modification of existing diagnostics codes

If you modify or enhance CFMIP diagnostics with new capabilities, we encourage you to send the modification/enhancement to the repository so that the whole community can benefit from the changes. To do so, please send an e-mail to the code repository owner as well as yoko.tsushima(at)metoffice.gov.uk with the following information:

1. Name of your organisation and group.

2. Name of the contact person contributing to the CFMIP-diagnostic in this group.

3. Name of the code repository to which you wish to contribute.

4. Text which describes your changes.

5. Type of research activity (if any) of this group (climate, NWP, CRM, Earth Observation, etc).

6. Name of the models to which CFMIP diagnostic will be applied.

Creation of new diagnostics code repositories

If you create a new repository for your metrics/diagnostics, our recommendation is to follow the structure of existing repositories as below. Details are described in the cfmip-diagnostics-code_repository Wiki page.

1. Different metrics/diagnostics are defined to be separate GitHub code repository.

2. A repository of the diagnostic is structured so that it can have subrepository in it.

If the metrics/diagnostics are published in a paper and possibly also results of multi-model analysis are described in a paper, they will be added to a list of repository above. For doing this, please send an e-mail to yoko.tsushima (at) metoffice.gov.uk with the following information:

1. Name of your organisation and group.

2. Name of the contact person developing the CFMIP-diagnostic in this group.

3. Name of the code repository (called project in google code) which you create.

4. Reference for published papers in which the metrics/diagnostics are described and multi-model analysis are applied.

5. Address of wikipage which describes the diagnostics/metrics.

6. Type of research activity (if any) of this group (climate, NWP, CRM, Earth Observation, etc).

7. Name of the models to which CFMIP diagnostic was applied.

Developers Group

We would also encourage you to subscribe to the CFMIP diagnostics developers Google group. You can do this in two different ways:

• Send an e-mail to yoko.tsushima(at)metoffice.gov.uk requesting an invitation, or

• visit the cfmip-diag-dev Google group web, click on the link "Apply for group membership", and follow the instructions. In this case, you will need to create a Google account first.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the EUCLIPSE Project which has provided funding for much of the initial work setting up the CFMIP diagnostic repository.