Satellite-Based Estimation of the Role of Cloud-Radiative Interaction in Accelerating Tropical Cyclone Development

Abstract

Abstract Recent modeling studies have suggested a potentially important role of cloud-radiative interactions in accelerating tropical cyclone (TC) development, but there has been only limited investigation of this in observations. Here, we investigate this by performing radiative transfer calculations based on cloud property retrievals from the CloudSat Tropical Cyclone (CSTC) dataset. We examine the radius–height structure of radiative heating anomalies, compute the resulting radiatively driven circulations, and use the moist static energy variance budget to compute radiative feedbacks. We find that inner-core midlevel ice water content and anomalous specific humidity increase with TC intensification rate, resulting in enhanced inner-core deep-layer longwave warming anomalies and shortwave cooling anomalies in rapidly intensifying TCs. This leads to a stronger radiatively driven deep in-up-and-out overturning circulation and inner-core radiative feedback in rapidly intensifying TCs. The longwave-driven circulation provides radially inward momentum fluxes and upward moisture fluxes, which benefit TC development, while the shortwave-driven circulation suppresses TC development. The longwave anomalies, which dominate the inner-core positive radiative feedback, are mainly generated from cloud-radiative interactions, with ice particles dominating the deep-layer circulation and liquid droplets and water vapor contributing to the shallow circulation. Moreover, the variability in ice water content, as opposed to the variability in liquid water content and the effective radii of ice particles and liquid droplets, dominates the uncertainty in TC-radiative interaction. These results provide observational evidence for the importance of cloud-radiative interactions in TC development and suggest that the amount and spatial structure of ice water content are critical for determining the strength of this interaction. Significance Statement The limited investigation of tropical cyclone (TC)-radiative interaction in observations impedes our understanding of TC development. This study aims to quantitatively show the spatial variation in radiation in TCs and their effect on TC development by using a set of satellite-based observations. We relate TC-radiative interaction to TC intensification and emphasize the inner-core features. Moreover, we quantitatively demonstrate the relative contribution from clouds, liquid droplets, ice particles, and water vapor to TC-radiative interaction as well as the source of the variation in radiative properties. These results provide an additional observational foundation for the importance of cloud-radiative interactions in TC development and support a quantitative validation for numerical modeling.