Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Yi Qin, Mark D. Zelinka, Stephen A. Klein
Summary: Atmosphere-only experiments are confirmed to be a valid approach for investigating climate feedbacks, especially cloud feedbacks in global climate model simulations. Results from CMIP6 show better agreement between atmosphere-only and coupled simulations for global-mean cloud feedbacks, but longer experiments are needed to reveal regional cloud feedbacks.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Casey J. Wall, Joel R. Norris, Anna Possner, Daniel T. Mccoy, Isabel L. Mccoy, Nicholas J. Lutsko
Summary: This study quantifies the relationship between anthropogenic sulfate aerosols and low-level clouds using satellite observations, and estimates the range of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) by constraining the associated radiative forcing. The results indicate that the uncertainty in aerosol forcing is smaller and ECS may be larger than previously assessed.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Ivan Mitevski, Lorenzo M. Polvani, Clara Orbe
Summary: This study investigates the impact of CO2 on climate sensitivity using two state-of-the-art fully coupled models. The results show that under CO2 forcing, there is an asymmetric response in surface temperature and climate sensitivity, with climate sensitivity increasing non-monotonically with increasing CO2 concentration.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Doyeon Kim, Hanjun Kim, Sarah M. Kang, Malte F. Stuecker, Timothy M. Merlis
Summary: The response of the Hadley cell to increasing CO2 concentrations is spatially complex, with a strengthened rising branch and weakened descending branch. This study examines the sensitivity of the Hadley cell to idealized radiative forcing in different latitude bands and finds that the response is primarily governed by the latitudinal structure of the forcing. The strengthening of the upward branch is attributed to tropical forcing, while the weakening of the descending branch is attributed to extratropical forcing. These responses are amplified by changes in atmospheric heat transport and modulated by radiative feedbacks, resulting in opposing effects from tropical and extratropical forcings.
NPJ CLIMATE AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Bosong Zhang, Ming Zhao, Haozhe He, Brian J. Soden, Zhihong Tan, Baoqiang Xiang, Chenggong Wang
Summary: This study investigates the relationship between climate sensitivity and the spatial pattern of radiative forcing. The results show that the climate is nearly twice as sensitive to Southern Ocean forcing compared to tropical forcing. These findings have important implications for understanding the impact of different forcings on climate.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Han Huang, Yi Huang
Summary: Radiative sensitivity is crucial for understanding climate change and variability. Although assessments of the top of atmosphere (TOA) radiation budget have been widely conducted, less attention has been given to the surface radiation budget and associated radiative sensitivity kernels. This study generates a new set of radiative kernels for both TOA and surface radiative fluxes based on ERA5 data, and compares them with other published kernels. The TOA kernels show good agreement in terms of global mean radiative sensitivity and feedback strength, while larger discrepancies are found in the surface kernels.
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE DATA
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
So-Won Park, Jong-Seong Kug, Sang-Yoon Jun, Su-Jong Jeong, Jin-Soo Kim
Summary: The study demonstrates that the continental warming response to CO2 physiological forcing in summer is primarily amplified by cloud feedback, while other climate feedbacks have relatively minor contributions. The significant variation in cloud feedback strength across models plays a primary role in leading to the large diversity of the continental warming response to physiological forcing.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2021)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Jia-Rui Shi, Young-Oh Kwon, Susan E. Wijffels
Summary: Separating the climate response to external forcing from internal climate variability is a challenge. This study focuses on North Pacific subsurface temperature responses driven by anthropogenic aerosol emissions. The findings show a nonmonotonic temporal response and a characteristic zonal-mean pattern associated with the aerosol forcing.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Review
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Ralph A. A. Kahn, Elisabeth Andrews, Charles A. A. Brock, Mian Chin, Graham Feingold, Andrew Gettelman, Robert C. C. Levy, Daniel M. M. Murphy, Athanasios Nenes, Jeffrey R. R. Pierce, Thomas Popp, Jens Redemann, Andrew M. M. Sayer, Arlindo M. M. da Silva, Larisa Sogacheva, Philip Stier
Summary: Aerosol forcing uncertainty remains the largest climate forcing uncertainty and has not diminished significantly in the past 20 years. This review summarizes the contributions made by satellite observations, atmospheric measurements, modeling, and data assimilation to reduce the uncertainty in aerosol forcing of climate. The review highlights the need for systematic aircraft in situ measurements, suborbital programs, and integration of satellite observations, measurements, and modeling to reduce the persistent uncertainty in aerosol climate forcing.
REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Chenggong Wang, Brian J. Soden, Wenchang Yang, Gabriel A. Vecchi
Summary: The latest generation of climate models show higher estimates of effective climate sensitivity due to stronger cloud feedback, requiring larger greenhouse gas reductions to meet global warming targets. Additionally, models with more positive cloud feedback also exhibit a stronger cooling effect from aerosol-cloud interactions, offsetting each other during historical periods.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
C. J. Smith, G. R. Harris, M. D. Palmer, N. Bellouin, W. Collins, G. Myhre, M. Schulz, J. -C. Golaz, M. Ringer, T. Storelvmo, P. M. Forster
Summary: A time history of historical aerosol effective radiative forcing from 1750 to 2019 was developed in this study, which shows a modest recovery in aerosol forcing between 1980 and 2014. The analysis also gives a range of equilibrium climate sensitivity, with a best estimate of 3.1 degrees C, and a transient climate response with a best estimate of 1.8 degrees C.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Shiv Priyam Raghuraman, David Paynter, V. Ramaswamy
Summary: Satellite observations reveal a significant positive trend in Earth's energy imbalance, but the contributing drivers have yet to be understood. Here, the authors show that it is exceptionally unlikely that this trend can be explained by internal variability; instead, anthropogenic forcing and feedbacks cause the trend.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Jia-Rui Shi, Young-Oh Kwon, Susan E. Wijffels
Summary: This study utilizes a pattern recognition method to isolate the forced patterns of anthropogenic aerosols on surface ocean and atmospheric variables. The results show that aerosol-forced responses are dominated by two modes, one associated with the historical change in global mean aerosol concentrations and the other with the transition of aerosol sources.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
James Weber, Scott Archer-Nicholls, Nathan Luke Abraham, Youngsub Matthew Shin, Paul Griffiths, Daniel P. Grosvenor, Catherine E. Scott, Alex T. Archibald
Summary: Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) have an impact on climate by affecting aerosols, aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI), ozone, and methane. The net climatic impact of BVOCs is uncertain due to their dependence on climate and land use. The description of BVOC chemistry plays a significant role in determining their climatic impact and the pathways by which they influence climate.
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Maria A. A. Rugenstein, Kyle C. Armour
Summary: The study highlights the importance of understanding different types of radiative feedbacks, which can vary significantly over time and impact the estimated climate sensitivity. By utilizing a simple regression method with differential feedback parameter, the true equilibrium climate sensitivity could potentially be estimated within a 5% error range in as little as 400 years.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
James J. Benedict, Brian Medeiros, Amy C. Clement, Jerry G. Olson
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2020)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Brian Medeiros
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
(2020)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Isla R. Simpson, Julio Bacmeister, Richard B. Neale, Cecile Hannay, Andrew Gettelman, Rolando R. Garcia, Peter H. Lauritzen, Daniel R. Marsh, Michael J. Mills, Brian Medeiros, Jadwiga H. Richter
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2020)
Review
Environmental Studies
Aiko Voigt, Nicole Albern, Paulo Ceppi, Kevin Grise, Ying Li, Brian Medeiros
Summary: The interaction between clouds and radiation plays a significant role in influencing the atmospheric circulation, internal variability, and response to climate change. Factors such as cloud-controlling factors and cloud-radiative effects affect the present-day climate. Models like COOKIE and cloud-locking methods help understand these impacts on the circulation and variability. Differences in shortwave and longwave cloud impacts contribute to model variations in response to global warming.
WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS-CLIMATE CHANGE
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Brian Medeiros, Amy C. Clement, James J. Benedict, Bosong Zhang
Summary: The study reveals that extreme precipitation over tropical oceans is strengthened through a positive feedback with cloud-radiative effects, and the lack of this feedback leads to a decrease in extreme precipitation. This highlights the importance of accurately predicting cloud structure and properties, as well as capturing the essence of organized convection in climate models in order to represent extreme rainfall accurately.
NPJ CLIMATE AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Simone Tilmes, Andrea Smith, Peter Lawrence, Tim Barnes, Greeshma Gadikota, Wojciech Grabowski, Douglas G. MacMartin, Brian Medeiros, Monica Morrison, Andreas Prein, Roy Rasmussen, Karen Rosenlof, Dale S. Rothman, Anton Seimon, Gyami Shrestha, Britton B. Stephens
Summary: The Community Climate Intervention Strategies Workshop aimed to assess a portfolio of climate intervention strategies through a community-driven, interdisciplinary research program. Approximately 250 participants from 80 universities and government agencies across 30 countries joined the online plenary and breakout sessions.
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Kevin A. Reed, Levi G. Silvers, Allison A. Wing, I-Kuan Hu, Brian Medeiros
Summary: This paper compares the characteristics and differences of the RCE climate states in CAM5 and CAM6, finding differences in precipitation rates, cloud structures, and precipitation forms between the two versions, while the parameterization of deep convection is similar. Additionally, extreme precipitation, convection aggregation, and climate sensitivity all show an increasing trend in both CAM5 and CAM6 with surface warming.
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
(2021)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Travis Aerenson, Roger Marchand, Helene Chepfer, Brian Medeiros
Summary: Theory and models predict that high-altitude clouds will occur higher in the atmosphere due to climate warming, with a significant impact on Earth's response to warming. Using the MISR instrument, it is observed that cloud-top height has increased over Southern Hemisphere oceans but not over Tropical or Northern Hemisphere oceans. Model simulations suggest that MISR should detect changes over the Southern Hemisphere oceans earlier than the Northern Hemisphere, and potentially detect a trend over the Tropics and Northern Hemisphere within 3-10 years.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Rosimar Rios-Berrios, George H. Bryan, Brian Medeiros, Falko Judt, Wei Wang
Summary: This study investigates the effects of resolved deep convection on tropical rainfall and its multi-scale variability. The results show that resolved deep convection leads to a narrower, stronger, and more equatorward intertropical convergence zone, as well as higher precipitation variance and more frequent heavy rainfall rates. Additionally, resolved deep convection results in stronger cold pools and upgradient convective momentum fluxes, while parameterized convection leads to more circular systems, weaker cold pools, and downgradient convective momentum fluxes.
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Timothy Andrews, Alejandro Bodas-Salcedo, Jonathan M. Gregory, Yue Dong, Kyle C. Armour, David Paynter, Pu Lin, Angshuman Modak, Thorsten Mauritsen, Jason N. S. Cole, Brian Medeiros, James J. Benedict, Herve Douville, Romain Roehrig, Tsuyoshi Koshiro, Hideaki Kawai, Tomoo Ogura, Jean-Louis Dufresne, Richard P. Allan, Chunlei Liu
Summary: The pattern of sea-surface temperature change has a significant impact on radiative feedback. The Earth experienced warming with feedbacks consistent with long-term climate sensitivity feedbacks over the historical record. However, unusual trends in tropical Pacific SSTs and cooling in the Southern Ocean post 1980 led to climate feedback becoming uncorrelated with expected long-term CO2 increase, indicating lower climate sensitivity.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
(2022)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Rosimar Rios-Berrios, Falko Judt, George Bryan, Brian Medeiros, Wei Wang
Summary: Accurate simulations of convectively coupled equatorial waves (CCEWs) are crucial for accurate forecasting of rainfall and weather patterns in the tropics. This study investigates the representation of various types of CCEWs in the Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere (MPAS-A) and finds that better representation of deep convection in the model improves the simulation of gravity wave-type equatorial waves. However, discrepancies are observed in the simulated rainfall and lower-tropospheric structure associated with easterly waves. The intensity and propagation speeds of these waves are primarily affected by resolved deep convection.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2023)
Letter
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
K. A. Reed, A. M. Stansfield, W. -C Hsu, G. J. Kooperman, A. A. Akinsanola, W. M. Hannah, A. G. Pendergrass, B. Medeiros
Summary: Conventional low-resolution climate models have biases in simulating precipitation frequency, intensity, and timing. High-resolution or multi-scale modeling framework improves the simulation, but deficiencies still exist. Comparing different E3SM configurations, E3SMv1-MMF provides the best simulation in terms of precipitation accumulation, frequency, and intensity from mesoscale convective systems and tropical cyclones. Despite limitations in precipitation intensity, conventional E3SMv1-LR performs the best simulation compared to observations.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Brian Medeiros, Jonah Shaw, Jennifer E. Kay, Isaac Davis
Summary: Clouds in climate models are parameterized using quantities on the model grid-scale, which is one of the main challenges in climate modeling due to the complexity of cloud processes. This study evaluated the representation of clouds in three generations of an atmosphere model against satellite observations. The results showed improvements in the top-of-atmosphere cloud radiative effect in the more recent generation, but also identified regional regressions in the cloud representation, particularly in the southern ocean. Different choices during model development, both structural and parametric, were found to lead to different cloud climatologies.
EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Gavin A. Schmidt, Timothy Andrews, Susanne E. Bauer, Paul J. Durack, Norman G. Loeb, V. Ramaswamy, Nathan P. Arnold, Michael G. Bosilovich, Jason Cole, Larry W. Horowitz, Gregory C. Johnson, John M. Lyman, Brian Medeiros, Takuro Michibata, Dirk Olonscheck, David Paynter, Shiv Priyam Raghuraman, Michael Schulz, Daisuke Takasuka, Vijay Tallapragada, Patrick C. Taylor, Tilo Ziehn
Summary: The CERES project has provided two decades of observed data on Earth's energy imbalance, revealing significant trends in reflected shortwave and outgoing longwave radiation. Climate model simulations suggest these trends are beyond internal variability, but current models do not fully capture the magnitude and breakdown of the trends. Revised observations and updated forcings indicate potential impacts on the modeled energy imbalance. Therefore, a new model intercomparison, CERESMIP, is proposed to target the CERES period with updated forcings, focusing on atmosphere-only simulations and analyzing key metrics such as energy imbalance and atmospheric feedbacks.
FRONTIERS IN CLIMATE
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Manuel Schlund, Birgit Hassler, Axel Lauer, Bouwe Andela, Patrick Joeckel, Remi Kazeroni, Saskia Loosveldt Tomas, Brian Medeiros, Valeriu Predoi, Stephane Senesi, Jerome Servonnat, Tobias Stacke, Javier Vegas-Regidor, Klaus Zimmermann, Veronika Eyring
Summary: Earth system models (ESMs) are advanced climate models that simulate the past, present, and future climate. The complexity of ESMs has increased, leading to a significant increase in the amount and volume of data provided. To evaluate the performance of ESMs, innovative tools like the Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) are required. However, ESMValTool requires data formatted according to the CMOR standard, making it challenging to apply to non-CMOR-compliant model output.
GEOSCIENTIFIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT
(2023)