Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme

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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 2: Atmosphäre II

UP 2.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 14:00–14:30, VMP 9 HS

Climate Change: Why the Details Remain Cloudy — •Bjorn Stevens — Max-Panck-Institute für Meteorologie, Hamburg, Germany

The role of clouds in the climate system, and in climate change is reviewed. Not only do clouds remain the largest source of uncertainty in predictions of future climate change, their representation is also central to the behavior of other aspects of the system, ranging from aerosol-chemistry-climate interactions, to atmosphere-ocean interactions, to interactions with the terrestrial biosphere. The cloud problem, like cancer, is not one, but rather many problems, and thus involves many questions: a couple of which (warm-rain formation and the proclivity for non-linear mixing) are extracted and focused on in more detail in the second half of my presentation.