Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
The Influence of Cloud Feedbacks on Arctic Climate Change
Stephen J. Vavrus1
1Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin, 1225 W. Dayton Street, Madison, WI, 53511, USA, Phone 608-265-5279, Fax 608-263-4190, sjvavrus@wisc.edu
By greatly affecting radiative fluxes at the surface and the top of the atmosphere, clouds exert a strong influence on modern climate and can be expected to play an important role in shaping future climates. To investigate the impact of clouds under greenhouse forcing, a global climate model is run with and without cloud feedbacks in a 2 x CO2 scenario. The prognostic cloud changes in the standard simulation enhance greenhouse warming at all latitudes, accounting for one-third of the global warming signal. This positive feedback is most pronounced in the Arctic, where approximately 40% of the warming is due to cloud changes. The strong cloud feedback in the Arctic is caused not only by local processes but also by cloud changes in lower latitudes, where positive top-of-the-atmosphere cloud radiative forcing (CRF) anomalies are larger. The extra radiative energy gained in lower latitudes is transported dynamically to the Arctic via moist static energy flux convergence. The results presented here demonstrate the importance of remote impacts from low- and middle-latitudes for Arctic climate change.
Abstract Categories: Physical Feedbacks
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