Why storms matter to climate
Courtney Schumacher (Texas A&M University)
Fri, January 19, 2018, 10:30am - 11:30am
Host: Pedro Di Nezio
Abstract: Large, organized storms significantly impact global circulations through vertical transports of heat, moisture, and momentum. These impacts are evident at intraseasonal, annual, and interannual time scales. This talk will discuss the most relevant aspects of convective storms and their important role in the Madden-Julian Oscillation, the East Pacific manifestation of the Hadley circulation, and El Nino. Organized storms have even been shown to have their own isotopic signatures, opening the path to examining variations in storm structure over longer (climate) time scales. Frustratingly, most global climate models (GCMs) don't account for mesoscale storm processes in their formulations - time permitting, discussion on ways to improve GCMs in this regard may also be covered.
