Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Contrasting effects of greenhouse and solar radiative forcing on the climate and hydrologic sensitivity: an analysis using simple climate models.

Chirag Dhara

First Post

Global Climate Models of increasing sophistication have come to dominate
climate studies. Yet, simplified climate models continue to offer insights in
the climate system. This talk focusses on the use of idealised models to study
how surface temperature and the water cycle respond to perturbations in
different radiation components at the surface. Simple quantitative
driver-response relationships derived from these models are shown to have wide
explanatory power: reconciling “paradoxes” in observations of climate
variables, understanding certain biases in GCM output, and why the sensitivity
of the water cycle is different to greenhouse gases and aerosols. This also
allows for the rapid formulation and first-order studies of new climate change
scenarios.