Micro2Macro: Origins of Climate Change Uncertainty Workshop

Location

University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY, and Virtual

Summary

Microphysical precipitation, cloud, and aerosol processes are a leading source of uncertainty in climate projections due to their effects on top of atmosphere radiation. Most of our uncertainty in historical anthropogenic radiative forcing is due to uncertainty in anthropogenic aerosol indirect forcing. This contributes to substantial uncertainty in the degree of climate sensitivity that can be inferred from the historical record of surface air temperature, and thus causes uncertainty in future climate projections. Similarly, global climate feedback uncertainty is mostly due to uncertainty in cloud feedback. Ultimately, clouds, precipitation, convection, and aerosols are dependent on microscale processes responding to large-scale environmental changes. The choices we make representing microscale processes with climate model parameterizations also result in substantial feedback and forcing uncertainty in simulations. Next-generation, km-resolution global models will remain challenged to represent such microphysical processes through parameterizations. We urgently need observational and modeling frameworks that target robust quantification and reduction of microphysical uncertainty and how it translates into uncertainty in predictions of macrophysical atmospheric properties and climate change.

Workshop Sponsors