Journal
CURRENT CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTS
Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 94-102Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s40641-015-0010-x
Keywords
Clouds; Radiation; Atmospheric dynamics; Jet streams; Cloud feedbacks; Interannual variability; Trends; Global warming
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [AGS-0960497]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [0960497] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We review the effects of dynamical variability on clouds and radiation in observations and models and discuss their implications for cloud feedbacks. Jet shifts produce robust meridional dipoles in upper-level clouds and longwave cloud-radiative effect (CRE), but low-level clouds, which do not simply shift with the jet, dominate the shortwave CRE. Because the effect of jet variability on CRE is relatively small, future poleward jet shifts with global warming are only a second-order contribution to the total CRE changes around the midlatitudes, suggesting a dominant role for thermodynamic effects. This implies that constraining the dynamical response is unlikely to reduce the uncertainty in extratropical cloud feedback. However, we argue that uncertainty in the cloud-radiative response does affect the atmospheric circulation response to global warming, by modulating patterns of diabatic forcing. How cloud feedbacks can affect the dynamical response to global warming is an important topic of future research.
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