A high-latitude convective cloud feedback
A variety of climate models are used to understand the convective cloudfeedback in this thesis. Simple, analytical models are used in two chapters to understand more complex models and their underlying physics. A zonally-averaged, two-level model of the atmosphere without a seasonal cycle, but containing a hydrological cycle and parameterizations of convection, precipitation, and clouds, and a longwave radiation scheme that explicitly depends on CO 2, water vapor, and cloud fraction is constructed and used as an initial test of the feedback mechanism. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) single column model (SCAM), which contains state-of-the-art atmospheric physics parameterizations, high vertical resolution, a full seasonal cycle, a thermodynamic sea ice model, and a mixed layer ocean is used in two chapters. Finally, it is shown that the feedback is active at high carbon dioxide levels in some of the fully-coupled state-of-the-art ocean-atmosphere global climate models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2008