2006/07/12 by Brian J. Soden, Isaac M. Held · 15 citations
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Climate variability and models #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Environmental science #Water vapor #Albedo (alchemy) #Atmosphere (unit) #Lapse rate #Cloud feedback #Climate model #Climatology #Atmospheric sciences #Positive feedback #Climate change #Humidity #Relative humidity #Climate sensitivity #Sea surface temperature #Atmospheric model #Meteorology #Geology #Oceanography
paper · doi:10.1175/jcli3799.1
openalex publication_date 2006/07/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Abstract The climate feedbacks in coupled ocean–atmosphere models are compared using a coordinated set of twenty-first-century climate change experiments. Water vapor is found to provide the largest positive feedback in all models and its strength is consistent with that expected from constant relative humidity changes in the water vapor mixing ratio. The feedbacks from clouds and surface albedo are also found to be positive in all models, while the only stabilizing (negative) feedback comes from the temperature response. Large intermodel differences in the lapse rate feedback are observed and shown to be associated with differing regional patterns of surface warming. Consistent with previous studies, it is found that the vertical changes in temperature and water vapor are tightly coupled in all models and, importantly, demonstrate that intermodel differences in the sum of lapse rate and water vapor feedbacks are small. In contrast, intermodel differences in cloud feedback are found to provide the largest source of uncertainty in current predictions of climate sensitivity.