Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 114, Issue 31, Pages 8181-8186Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620493114
Keywords
climate dynamics; climate change; cloud feedbacks; extratropical dynamics; general circulation
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Funding
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate Dynamics Program
- European Research Council (ERC) [694768]
- CloudSAT via National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- NSF Climate Dynamics Program
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The troposphere is the region of the atmosphere characterized by low static stability, vigorous diabatic mixing, and widespread condensational heating in clouds. Previous research has argued that in the tropics, the upper bound on tropospheric mixing and clouds is constrained by the rapid decrease with height of the saturation water vapor pressure and hence radiative cooling by water vapor in clear-sky regions. Here the authors contend that the same basic physics play a key role in constraining the vertical structure of tropospheric mixing, tropopause temperature, and cloud-top temperature throughout the globe. It is argued that radiative cooling by water vapor plays an important role in governing the depth and amplitude of large-scale dynamics at extratropical latitudes.
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