Posted in 2016
Lance Rayborn completes his MS thesis
- 01 December 2016
Lance Rayborn has successfully completed and defended his thesis for the MS (Master of Science) degree, and is the first graduate from our group!
Lance’s thesis is entitled Understanding the Dependence of Radiative Feedbacks and Clouds on the Spatial Structure of Ocean Heat Uptake. It is a follow-up study to Rose et al. (2014, GRL). Lance used a variety of analysis techniques including radiative kernels to carefully compare the response of several different climate models to specific imposed patterns of ocean heat uptake. In particular, the study aims to draw specific causal links between spatial patterns of heat uptake under transient global warming and cloud processes that shape the overall global climate sensitivity.
New paper by Rose and Rayborn on effects of ocean heat uptake
- 26 August 2016
The latest paper from our group has been accepted for publication in Current Climate Change Reports. We wrote this piece at the invitation of the section editor Mark Zelinka.
The paper is Rose and Rayborn, “The effects of ocean heat uptake on transient climate sensitivity”. It deals with the phenomenon of time-dependent climate sensitivity, and explores some compelling new ideas about connections between the oceans, atmospheric radiation, and global cloud cover that determine climate sensitivity. Our paper includes substantial review as well as some interesting original results and speculations.
Snowball Earth synthesis submitted to Science Advances
- 04 May 2016
Brian contributed to a new synthesis article on the geology and climate dynamics of Snowball Earth, just submitted to Science Advances.
The lead author is Paul F. Hoffman, the geologist who has been the leading champion of the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth hypothesis. Dr. Hoffman has long advocated for the importance of forward modeling studies of the physical and chemical environment of a Snowball Earth event, to bring context and constraints to the interpretation of the geological record. Along the way, he has cultivated relationships with some of the best climate dynamicists and modelers in the business. This review article summarizes recent progress on understanding the most profound episodes of global environmental change in Earth history.
Cameron Rencurrel and Lance Rayborn awarded summer research fellowships
- 20 April 2016
Two of our graduate students have been awarded funded fellowships to attend computational research workshops in Summer 2016.
Cameron Rencurrel will travel to NCAR in Boulder Colorado to attend the Dynamical Core Model Intercomparion Project (DCMIP) Summer School on Future-Generation Non-Hydrostatic Weather and Climate Models. This will include two weeks of lectures and workshops on the theory, design and development of next-generation numerical models for atmospheric simulation. Sponsors include NCAR, NOAA, NASA, NSF, DOE, and the WMO.
Water vapor paper posted online
- 23 March 2016
Our latest paper: The vertical structure of tropospheric water vapor: comparing radiative and ocean-driven climate changes, by Rose and Rencurrel, is in press for Journal of Climate. See previous post for a description. The preprint is now available online from my publication page, or directly from Journal of Climate.
Water vapor paper accepted in J. Climate
- 14 March 2016
Our latest paper: The vertical structure of tropospheric water vapor: comparing radiative and ocean-driven climate changes, by Rose and Rencurrel, is now accepted for publication in Journal of Climate.
The paper looks at rates of change of precipitable water with surface temperature in a suite of simulations driven by different combinations of greenhouse gas forcing and prescribed ocean heat uptake. We find fractional rates ranging between 3.6 and 11 %/K globally. These results seem at first glance to suggest substantial departures from Clausius-Clapeyron scaling, but actually result from different spatial patterns of temperature change and nearly fixed relative humidity.