Del Genio, A.D. 2012. Representing the sensitivity of convective
cloud systems to tropospheric humidity in general circulation
models. Surveys in Geophysics 33: 637-656. Climate modelers have
long struggled to adequately represent the sensitivity of
convective cloud systems to tropospheric humidity in their
mathematical representations of earth's climate system. What was
done Del Genio reviews the rate of progress in this important
endeavor in the journal Surveys in Geophysics. What was learned
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist
- stationed at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New
York - finds a number of important problems related to this
particular field of endeavor that have yet to be adequately
resolved. He notes, for example, that many parameterizations of
convective cloud variability "are not sufficiently sensitive to
variations in tropospheric humidity," which "lack of
sensitivity," as he describes it, "can be traced in part to
underestimated entrainment of enviro