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Are atmospheric updrafts a key to unlocking climate forcing and sensitivity?

Donner, Leo J.; O'Brien, Travis A.; Rieger, Daniel 1; Vogel, Bernhard 1; Cooke, William F.
1 Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)

Abstract:

Both climate forcing and climate sensitivity persist as stubborn uncertainties limiting the extent to which climate models can provide actionable scientific scenarios for climate change. A key, explicit control on cloud–aerosol interactions, the largest uncertainty in climate forcing, is the vertical velocity of cloud-scale updrafts. Model-based studies of climate sensitivity indicate that convective entrainment, which is closely related to updraft speeds, is an important control on climate sensitivity. Updraft vertical velocities also drive many physical processes essential to numerical weather prediction. Vertical velocities and their role in atmospheric physical processes have been given very limited attention in models for climate and numerical weather prediction. The relevant physical scales range down to tens of meters and are thus frequently sub-grid and require parameterization. Many stateof- science convection parameterizations provide mass fluxes without specifying vertical velocities, and parameterizations that do provide vertical velocities have been subject to limited evaluation against what have until recently been scant observations. ... mehr


Volltext §
DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000062667
Originalveröffentlichung
DOI: 10.5194/acp-16-12983-2016
Scopus
Zitationen: 48
Web of Science
Zitationen: 45
Dimensions
Zitationen: 48
Cover der Publikation
Zugehörige Institution(en) am KIT Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung Troposphärenforschung (IMKTRO)
KIT-Zentrum Klima und Umwelt (ZKU)
Publikationstyp Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Publikationsjahr 2016
Sprache Englisch
Identifikator ISSN: 1680-7316, 1680-7324
urn:nbn:de:swb:90-626676
KITopen-ID: 1000062667
HGF-Programm 12.01.01 (POF III, LK 01) Clouds in a pertubed atmosphere
Erschienen in Atmospheric chemistry and physics
Verlag European Geosciences Union (EGU)
Band 16
Heft 20
Seiten 12983-12992
Nachgewiesen in Web of Science
Scopus
Dimensions
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