Defenses for Fall 2024

IMPACTS OF HISTORIC ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOL FORCING ON LARGE CLIMATE ENSEMBLES THROUGH THE LENS OF POLEWARD ENERGY TRANSPOR

September 18, 2024

Michael Needham

In discussions of the human impact on Earth’s climate, aerosols receive much less attention than greenhouse gases. And yet, the change in the global mean effective radiative forcing from anthropogenic aerosols was roughly of the same magnitude (but of opposite sign) as the change in greenhouse gases throughout much of the twentieth century. Aerosols also represent the largest uncertainty in…

Effects of Warming and Stratospheric Aerosol Injection on Tropical Cyclone Distribution and Frequency in a High-Resolution Global Circulation Model

August 29, 2024

Andrew Feder

Tropical cyclones (TCs) occur stochastically in any given TC season, with varying numbers and intensities within basins over time. Nevertheless, they arise out of fundamental laws of thermodynamics and fluid physics, and in recent years, as global circulation models (GCMs) have increased in spatial resolution, increasingly realistic TCs and TC distributions have emerged from them. Where prior…

Radiative Feedbacks in Tropical Organized Convection and the Madden-Julian Oscillation

August 21, 2024

Wei-Ting Hsiao

The organization of tropical deep convection is supported by radiative feedbacks, in which high clouds and moisture anomalies associated with convection imposes anomalous longwave (LW) radiative heating in the atmosphere, further supporting convection. Despite an abundance of studies about numerical simulations, the interactions between tropical convective organization, radiative feedbacks, and…