GISS Lunch Seminar

Speaker: Monisha Natchiar (Univ. Exeter)
Topic: Dynamical Influence on the Tropical High Clouds with Warming

Tropical high cloud cover decreases with surface warming in most general circulation models. The "stability-iris" hypothesis posits that this reduction is thermodynamically controlled by the rise of tropical high clouds to a more stable atmosphere, which reduces the convective outflow in the tropical upper troposphere resulting in reduced anvil cloudiness. But how do changes in the large-scale circulation independent of local thermodynamic changes contribute to anvil cloud changes with warming? In this talk, I will walk you through a novel experimental design that we used to segregate the dynamical influence from the local thermodynamical influence on the tropical high clouds with warming, and the results of this idealized study.