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Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks
Low‐cloud based emergent constraints have the potential to substantially reduce uncertainty in Earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity, but recent work has shown that previously developed constraints fail in the latest generation of climate models, suggesting that new approaches are needed. Here, we...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34219827 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2021GL092934 |
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author | Lutsko, Nicholas J. Popp, Max Nazarian, Robert H. Albright, Anna Lea |
author_facet | Lutsko, Nicholas J. Popp, Max Nazarian, Robert H. Albright, Anna Lea |
author_sort | Lutsko, Nicholas J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Low‐cloud based emergent constraints have the potential to substantially reduce uncertainty in Earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity, but recent work has shown that previously developed constraints fail in the latest generation of climate models, suggesting that new approaches are needed. Here, we investigate the potential for emergent constraints to reduce uncertainty in regional cloud feedbacks, rather than the global‐mean cloud feedback. Strong relationships are found between the monthly and interannual variability of tropical clouds, and the tropical net cloud feedback. These relationships are combined with observations to substantially narrow the uncertainty in the tropical cloud feedback and demonstrate that the tropical cloud feedback is likely >0Wm(−2)K(−1). Promising relationships are also found in the 90°–60°S and 30°–60°N regions, though these relationships are not robust across model generations and we have not identified the associated physical mechanisms. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8243946 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82439462021-07-02 Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks Lutsko, Nicholas J. Popp, Max Nazarian, Robert H. Albright, Anna Lea Geophys Res Lett Research Letter Low‐cloud based emergent constraints have the potential to substantially reduce uncertainty in Earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity, but recent work has shown that previously developed constraints fail in the latest generation of climate models, suggesting that new approaches are needed. Here, we investigate the potential for emergent constraints to reduce uncertainty in regional cloud feedbacks, rather than the global‐mean cloud feedback. Strong relationships are found between the monthly and interannual variability of tropical clouds, and the tropical net cloud feedback. These relationships are combined with observations to substantially narrow the uncertainty in the tropical cloud feedback and demonstrate that the tropical cloud feedback is likely >0Wm(−2)K(−1). Promising relationships are also found in the 90°–60°S and 30°–60°N regions, though these relationships are not robust across model generations and we have not identified the associated physical mechanisms. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-05-20 2021-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8243946/ /pubmed/34219827 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2021GL092934 Text en © 2021. The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Letter Lutsko, Nicholas J. Popp, Max Nazarian, Robert H. Albright, Anna Lea Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title | Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title_full | Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title_fullStr | Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title_full_unstemmed | Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title_short | Emergent Constraints on Regional Cloud Feedbacks |
title_sort | emergent constraints on regional cloud feedbacks |
topic | Research Letter |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34219827 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2021GL092934 |
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