1. Assessing Heating in Climate Models  Top: Atmospheric diabatic heating estimates from the TRMM satellite quantify the response of regional energy budgets in the Tropical Pacific to the 1998 El Niño event.  Right: Similar fields extracted from the latest IPCC climate models indicate that today’s GCMs still have difficulty modeling the response of diabatic heating in the Tropical West Pacific to ENSO.  In general, vertical profiles of radiative heating on large scales developed under NEWS enable the assessment of global climate models to be evaluated. T. S. L’Ecuyer, G. L. Stephens, Z. Luo WestPacificEastPacificEquatorialPacific Feb. 1998 (El Niño) Feb. 1999 (La Niña) Cooling/Heating (K day -1 ) WestPacificEastPacificEquatorialPacific Latent Heating Net Heating/Cooling Clear-sky SW Cloudy-sky SW Precipitating SW Clear-sky LW Cloudy-sky LW Precipitating LW Observed Regional Heat Budgets (-0.6) (0.43) (-0.6) (0.67) (0.51) (0.87) (-0.1) (0.47) (-0.4) (0.54) TRMM ECHAM5 IPSL-CM4 MIROC-m UKMO CNRM INM-CM3 MIROC-h CCSM3 CGCM2 (0.68) (0.94) (1.78) (1.26) (1.09) (1.24) (1.36) (1.71) (0.77) (1.31) TRMM ECHAM5 IPSL-CM4 MIROC-m UKMO CNRM INM-CM3 MIROC-h CCSM3 CGCM2 Latent HeatingSW HeatingLW Cooling Latent HeatingSW HeatingLW Cooling February 1999 (La Niña) February 1998 (El Niño) IPCC-AR4 Model Heat Budgets Cooling/Heating (K day -1 )

2. D. Posselt, T. S. L’Ecuyer, G. L. Stephens Extension to Cloud Resolving Scale  NEWS energy and water cycle datasets also allow the fidelity of cloud resolving model simulations of the energy and water cycle to be assessed.  When compared against corresponding products from TRMM (red curves), PDFs of energy and water cycle parameters from CRM simulations (blue curves) over the SCSMEX region suggest that the model is too moist (upper left), predicts rainfall that is too intense (lower left), and exhibits too much shortwave cloud radiative forcing at TOA (upper right) during the active monsoon period.  Increasing (green curves) or decreasing (black curves) the modeled particle size distribution and fall velocities demonstrates that model performance is affected by varying its parameterizations over a reasonable range suggesting that NEWS products could be used to refine model microphysics. Color Key TRMM Control Run Increased Particle Size Decreased Particle Size

3. Probing the Energy and Water Cycle With A-Train Measurements T. S. L’Ecuyer, J. M. Haynes, and G. L. Stephens  NEWS research, is also being used in combination with that from other focus areas to provide a new perspective on the global energy and water cycle.  Energy and water cycle products from CloudSat, for example, are yielding insights into the vertical distributions of radiative heating associated with a variety of different cloud systems as well as the importance of light and frozen precipitation in the global hydrologic cycle (shown here as a function of latitude and surface type). July 2006 - Jan. 2007

4. Latest Publications Papers:  L’Ecuyer, T. S. and G. L. Stephens, 2007. “The Tropical Atmospheric Energy Budget from the TRMM Perspective. Part II: Evaluating GCM Representations of the Sensitivity of Regional Energy and Water Cycles to the 1998 ENSO Event”, J. Climate, in press.  Posselt, D. J., T. S. L’Ecuyer, W.-K. Tao, A. Y. Hou, and G. L. Stephens, 2007. “Evaluation of the Cloud-resolving Model Component of a Multi-scale Modeling Framework Using Observations from TRMM”, submitted to J. Climate. Presentations:  T. S. L’Ecuyer and G. L. Stephens: “Radiative Heating Profile Products from TRMM and CloudSat”, DOE-ARM Radiative Heating Profile Workshop, San Diego, CA, January, 2007.  T. S. L'Ecuyer. “A Satellite Energy and Water Cycle Dataset for Climate Studies in the Southern Hemisphere”, 8th Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography, Iguassu Falls, Brazil, April, 2006.