Joint Seminar: Understanding continental climate change
Near-surface temperature and relative humidity respond more strongly to climate change over continents than over oceans. Although these land-ocean contrasts are perhaps the most robust and prominent features of global warming, they are only beginning to be understood. Here I develop a new quantitative theory for the response of continents to climate change based on atmospheric dynamics and moisture transport. The theory is applied to a hierarchy of climate models and to reanalysis data, and is found to capture both observed and projected trends in land temperature and relative humidity. The warming and drying (in a relative humidity sense) over land in recent decades is shown to be closely linked to the oceans, rather than to local land-surface processes. Contrasting changes in the water cycles over land and ocean will also be discussed.
Datum
08.02.2017
Uhrzeit
13:30 Uhr
Ort
- Bundesstr. 53, room 022/023
- Seminar Room 022/023, Ground Floor, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Hamburg
ReferentIn
Michael Byrne, ETH Zürich