Radiation-circulation coupling of atmospheric climate changes

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Anthropogenic climate changes alter Earth's radiation balance and give rise to global warming. Uncertainty in the physical science dimension of climate change is a critical bottleneck in determining the socially relevant climate impacts and making climate policy decisions. The changes in radiation that cause global warming also provoke atmospheric circulation changes. These, in turn, drive regional climate changes in temperature and precipitation. However, the atmospheric circulation also shapes the radiation changes by determining the distribution of clouds and atmospheric humidity. This two--way interaction or coupling between radiation and circulation is the scientific challenge that this research program will address. One measure of the importance of this coupling is that the World Climate Research Programme has identified it as a "Grand Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity."******The proposed research program identifies multiple scales of radiation--circulation coupling that will be addressed: the global scale of the planetary circulations and their role in Arctic warming, the storm scale of the middle latitudes (about one thousand kilometers in horizontal size), and the storm scales found in the tropics (from kilometers to several hundred kilometers in size). The importance of radiation--circulation coupling across these scales will be unraveled using a combination of climate theory, numerical simulation, and observational analysis. This program's science goals are focused on Arctic warming, attribution of precipitation changes to anthropogenic warming, and the response of tropical cyclones to warming, three aspects of climate change with substantial impacts on human well being. This is research will benefit Canada by (i) reducing uncertainty in future climate changes, (ii) training a diverse group of students spanning all academic stages in contemporary computational science methods, and (iii) enhancing the nation's profile in the international climate research community.