Środowiskowe Seminarium Fizyki Atmosfery

One of the big questions occupying climate science is how clouds respond to warming. Their response acts as a feedback on the radiative forcing of the climate system and paces uncertainty in future projections of warming. In this talk I review the evolution of our thinking regarding this question, and why it is important. In so doing I illustrate how vague concepts have been made more precise, to the point where are now putting together field campaigns designed to test specific physical hypotheses. Whereas this, and most, work has emphasized the role of low (stratiform) cloud, increasingly we are understanding how more convective clouds set the stage upon which low-stratiform clouds act out their part. In extremely warm climates, as might have been characteristic of the late Eocene, these interactions can give rise to quite surprising swings in the tropical climate. These findings suggest that, as the Earth warms, the behavior of the tropics may well be a source of surprises.