92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Tuesday, 24 January 2012
An Analysis of Convection, Clouds and Water Vapor in a 4xCO2 Arctic
Hall E (New Orleans Convention Center )
Melissa A. Burt, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO; and D. A. Randall and M. Branson

Equable climates are periods during which the high latitudes are extremely warm, and the equator to pole temperature gradient is very small. Recent work by D. Abbot and E. Tziperman suggests that strong positive cloud and water vapor feedbacks can produce equable climates when the CO2 concentration is high enough.Building on their work, we analyze the joint variability of the hydrological and energy cycles of the atmosphere and lower boundary in the Arctic, with CO2 at four times the preindustrial concentration, with emphasis on water vapor, deep convection, and clouds. The goal of our work is to gain a better understanding of how the cloud and water vapor feedbacks operate in the Arctic environment. We compare simulations performed with the CAM, and the SP-CAM, in which the standard parameterized schemes are replaced with a cloud resolving model.

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