Understanding atmospheric water and climate

Abstract

Understanding climate and climate change is, and always will be, rooted in an understanding of water. In the atmosphere, water mediates the main modes of energy transfer, through both radiative and convective processes, often in uncanny ways. For instance, the slow and large-scale coupling of clouds to radiation has a strong, but still poorly understood, influence on the amplitude and pattern of atmospheric circulation - and hence regional climate. But untangling these influences often depends on understanding convective processes that happen more quickly and on much finer scales. From the point of view of better understanding the atmospheric general circulation and climate change more broadly, no barrier to progress looms as large as an inadequate understanding of the coupling between water and circulation.