CANCELED - Sack Lunch Seminar - Nadir Jeevanjee (NOAA GFDL)
Wednesday, March 02, 2022 at 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Building 54, Room 915
21 AMES ST, Cambridge, MA 02139
CANCELED
New views on the water vapor feedback
Abstract: Since the pioneering work of Suki Manabe over fifty years ago, the water vapor feedback has been known as the strongest and perhaps most fundamental climate feedback. However, the conventional `feedback paradigm' for quantifying the water vapor feedback exhibits several undesirable characteristics, which we review. We add to these critiques by using high-resolution radiative transfer calculations to spectrally-resolve the water vapor feedback in the thermal infrared, showing that it is constrained to cancel other feedbacks almost perfectly throughout much of the infrared spectrum. As an alternative, we advocate focusing on the total longwave clear-sky (LWCS) feedback parameter, which implicitly accounts for the water vapor (and other) feedbacks. Building on recent work by Koll and Cronin, we show that the LWCS feedback has a characteristic value of 2 W/m^2/K, is robust across GCMs and indeed across a broad model hierarchy, and can be understood with only pencil-and-paper. Taken together, these results yield a new view of the water vapor feedback which can be summarized on a chalkboard, and which fully incorporates recent advances in our understanding of terrestrial radiative transfer.
About this Series
The Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Sack Lunch Seminar Series is an informal seminar series within PAOC that focuses on more specialized topics than the PAOC Colloquium. Seminar topics include all research concerning the science of atmosphere, ocean and climate. The seminars usually take place on Wednesdays from 12-1pm in 54-915. The presentations are either given by an invited speaker or by a member of PAOC and can focus on new research or discussion of a paper of particular interest.
Contact: sacklunch-committee@mit.edu for Zoom information
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