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

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 state-of-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. Atmospheric observations imply that the distribution of vertical velocities depends on the areas over which the vertical velocities are averaged. Distributions of vertical velocities in climate models may capture this behavior, but it has not been accounted for when parameterizing cloud and precipitation processes in current models.Newmore » observations of convective vertical velocities offer a potentially promising path toward developing process-level cloud models and parameterizations for climate and numerical weather prediction. Taking account of the scale dependence of resolved vertical velocities offers a path to matching cloud-scale physical processes and their driving dynamics more realistically, with a prospect of reduced uncertainty in both climate forcing and sensitivity.« less

Authors:

Donner, Leo J. ;

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Donner, Leo J."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-1487-7300"

O'Brien, Travis A. ;

• Search DOE PAGES for author "O'Brien, Travis A."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-6643-1175"

Rieger, Daniel; Vogel, Bernhard; Cooke, William F.

Publication Date:

Thu Oct 20 00:00:00 EDT 2016

Research Org.:

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1329440

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1377545

Grant/Contract Number:  

SC0004534; AC02-05CH11231

Resource Type:

Published Article

Journal Name:

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online) Journal Volume: 16 Journal Issue: 20; Journal ID: ISSN 1680-7324

Publisher:

Copernicus Publications, EGU

Country of Publication:

Germany

Language:

English

Subject:

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES