E. Atmospheric Structure in Equilibrium States

 The dependency of the structure of the three-dimensional gray atmosphere on the solar constant and the runaway greenhouse states E.a. Global Mean Values E.c. Condensation Heating Distribution (Troposphere)

b. Temperature Distribution and Mass Stream Function (Troposphere)

Figure 1 shows the meridional distributions of temperature and mass stream function. With the increase of solar constant, the values of temperature increases and the slopes of isotherms decrease at the mid-latitudes. When solar constant increases, the meridional difference of atmospheric temperature decreases across the entire troposphere. Since vertical filtering is applied to the model calculations, it is inappropriate to determine the tropopause height from the temperature distribution. The use of the distribution of condensation heating is considered appropriate for discussions on the tropopause.

A distinctive feature of mass stream function is that the width of the Hadley circulation hardly changes with changes of solar constant. Because the width of the Hadley circulation is determined by the theory of Held and Hou (1980), it can be presumed that changes in the surface flux distribution do not affect the width of the circulation.

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Figure 1: Temperature distribution (K) and mass stream function (kg/sec) in equilibrium states.

E.b. Temperature Distribution and Mass Stream Function (Troposphere) The dependency of the structure of the three-dimensional gray atmosphere on the solar constant and the runaway greenhouse states E.a. Global Mean Values E.c. Condensation Heating Distribution (Troposphere)