How much will the climate warm?
The Role of Clouds in Regional and Global
Climate Sensitivity

Cloud feedback is one of the greatest uncertainties in projecting future responses of climate the human influences such as increased carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere.  Annular modes of variability are one of the greatest to contributors to natural variability outside the tropics and they also respond strongly to climate change.  Annular modes and climate feedback are coupled through their interactions, and climate models produce both a strong poleward shift of extratropical jets streams and a robust dipole in the radiative effect of clouds.  These topics will be introduced and it will be shown that cloud feedbacks occur independently of the jet shift, but act to enhance the poleward shift of the extratropical jet, which is in turn coupled to the widening of the dry zone of the subtropics.

Dennis L. Hartmann

 

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