Clearing the Clouds of Uncertainty
Climate sensitivity – the equilibrium response of Earth’s surface temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide – is highly uncertain and leads to spread in our predictions of future climate change. Most of this uncertainty arises from radiative feedbacks that can amplify or diminish warming induced by carbon dioxide. Clouds, which act as a strong lever on the Earth’s radiation budget but have a complicated and largely unconstrained response to warming, are the primary driver of uncertainty. In this talk, I will explain the manifold reasons why clouds have historically been such an Achilles heel for our predictions of future climate and provide some recent examples of major progress being made to narrow these uncertainties.
Bio: Mark Zelinka is an atmospheric scientist who researches climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His work uses theory, observations, and global climate models to investigate climate sensitivity and cloud feedbacks. He received his BS in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University in 2004 and his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 2010 before joining LLNL as a postdoc in 2011.