Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:40:20.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Changes in mist immersion

from Part I - General perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2011

By
P. Foster
Edited by
L. A. Bruijnzeel ,
F. N. Scatena  and
L. S. Hamilton
P. Foster
Affiliation:
University of Bristol, UK
L. A. Bruijnzeel
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
F. N. Scatena
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
L. S. Hamilton
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews recent research on changes in cloud formation at cloud forest and other sites. These changes are discussed in the context of the global hydrological cycle, global climate change, and tropical deforestation. After a simplified review of the basic theory on (changes in) cloud formation, a simple equation is derived governing the expected changes in the altitude of the lifting condensation level associated with given changes in humidity and temperature of the air. Using the ECHAM4 Global Circulation Model, predictions are made about changes in cloud base height for the next century. These prove to be consistent with an intensification of the hydrological cycle.

INTRODUCTION

How cloud characteristics will change in the coming centuries is of critical importance to cloud forests (Foster,2001). Recent literature has concentrated mostly on the changes in the altitude of the cloud base, primarily because it is easily quantifiable in models and observation (cf. Lawton et al., this volume). This chapter will continue that trend but notes that changes in the frequency of cloud formation and/or the water content of clouds (Hildebrandt and Eltahir, 2008) may be of equal or greater consequence than changes in the altitude of formation per se. Emphasis here will be on changes driven by increases in atmospheric CO2 although it is recognized that aerosols, because of their key role in cloud formation and circulation patterns (Liepert et al., 2004), should also be included in the prediction of future cloud formation regimes.

Type
Chapter
Information
Tropical Montane Cloud Forests
Science for Conservation and Management
 , pp. 57 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, M. R., and Ingram, W. J. (2002). Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrological cycle. Nature 419: 224–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bendix, J., Rollenbeck, R., and Palacios, W. E. (2004). Cloud detection in the tropics: a suitable tool for climate ecological studies in the high mountains of Ecuador. International Journal of Remote Sensing 25: 4521–4540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohren, C. F., and Albrecht, X. (1998). Atmospheric Thermodynamics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, S. J., Parker, D. E., Folland, C. K., and Macadam, I. (2000). Decadal variability in the lower-tropospheric lapse rate. Geophysical Research Letters 27: 997–1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, J., Carlson, B. E., and Genio, A. D. Del (2002). Evidence for strengthening of the tropical general circulation in the 1990s. Science 295: 838–841.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, T. -C., Yoon, J. -H., Croix, K. J. St., and Takle, E. S. (2001). Suppressing impacts of Amazonian deforestation by the global circulation change. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82: 2209–2216.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chernykh, I. V., Alduchov, O. A., and Eskridge, R. E. (2001). Trends in low and high cloud boundaries and errors in height determination of cloud boundaries. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82: 1941–1947.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chu, P. -S., Yu, Z. -P., and Hastenrather, S. (1994). Detecting climate change concurrent with deforestation in the Amazon Basin: which way has it gone?Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 75: 579–582.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craven, J. P., Jewell, R. E., and Brooks, H. E. (2002). Comparison between observed convective cloud-base heights and lifting condensation level for two different lifted parcels. Weather and Forecasting 17: 885–890.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dai, A. (2006). Recent climatology, variability and trends in global surface humidity, Journal of Climate 19: 3589–3606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, P. (2001). The potential negative impacts of global climate change on tropical montane cloud forests. Earth-Science Reviews 55: 73–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gash, J. H. C., and Nobre, C. A. (1997). Climatic effects of Amazonian deforestation: some results from ABRACOS. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78: 823–830.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hildebrandt, A., and Eltahir, E. A. B. (2008). Using a horizontal precipitation model to investigate the role of turbulent cloud deposition in survival of a seasonal cloud forest in Dhofar. Journal of Geophysical Research 113, G04028, doi:10.1029/2008JG000727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karmalkar, A. V., Bradley, R. S., and Diaz, H. F. (2008). Climate change scenario for Costa Rican montane forests. Geophysical Research Letters 25, L11702, doi: 10.1029/2008GL033940.Google Scholar
Lean, J., and Warrilow, D. A. (1989). Simulation of the regional climatic impact of Amazon deforestation. Nature 342: 411–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liepert, B. G., Feichter, J., Lohmann, U., and Roeckner, E. (2004). Can aerosols spin down the water cycle in a warmer and moister world?Geophysical Research Letters 31: L06207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohmann, U., and Feichter, J. (2005). Global indirect aerosol effects: a review. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 5: 715–737.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopez, P. (2007). Cloud and precipitation parameterizations in modeling and variational data assimilation: a review. Journal of Atmospheric Science 64: 3766–3784.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkus, J. S. (1955). The effects of a large island upon the trade-wind air stream. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 81: 538–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molinari, J., and Dudek, M. (1992). Parameterization of convective precipitation in mesoscale numerical models: a critical review. Monthly Weather Review 120: 326–344.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nair, U. S., Lawton, R. O., Welch, R. M., and Pielke, R. A.. (2003). Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests: sensitivity of cumulus cloud field characteristics to lowland deforestation. Journal of Geophysical Research 108 (D7): 4206–4218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nair, U. S., Asefi, S., Welch, R. M., et al. (2008). Biogeography of tropical montane cloud forests. II. Mapping of orographic cloud immersion. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 47: 2183–2197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nobre, C. A., Sellers, P. J., and Shukla, J. (1991). Amazonian deforestation and regional climate change. Journal of Climate 4: 957–988.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peirrehumbert, R. T. (2002). The hydrological cycle in deep time climate problems. Nature 419: 191–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peixoto, J. P., and Oort, A. H. (1992). Physics of Climate. New York: American Institute of Physics.Google Scholar
Pounds, J. A., Fogden, M. P. L., and Campbell, J. H. (1999). Biological response to climate change on a tropical mountain. Nature 398: 611–615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pounds, J. A., Bustamante, M., Coloma, L. A., et al. (2006). Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming. Nature 439: 161–167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ray, D. K, Nair, U. S., Welch, R. M., et al. (2003). Effects of land use in Southwest Australia. I. Observations of cumulus cloudiness and energy fluxes. Journal of Geophysical Research 108: 4414–4433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, D. K., Nair, U. S., Lawton, R. O., Welch, R. M., and Pielke, R. A. (2006). Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests: sensitivity of orographic cloud formation to deforestation in the plains. Journal of Geophysical Research 111: D02108, doi: 10.1029/2005JD006096.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, P. W. (1996). The Tropical Rain Forest. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, A. D., Denny, E. G., Siccama, T. G., and Lee, X. (2003). Evidence for a rising cloud ceiling in Eastern North America. Journal of Climate 16: 2093–2098.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, S. B., and Avissar, R. (2002). Impact of land use/land cover change on regional hydrometeorology in Amazonia. Journal of Geophysical Research 107: doi:10.1029/2000JD00026, 2002.Google Scholar
Slingo, J. M. (1987). The development and verification of a cloud prediction scheme for the ECMWF model. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 113: 899–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperling, F. N., Washington, R., and Whittaker, R. J. (2004). Future climate change of the subtropical north Atlantic: implications for the cloud forests of Tenerife. Climatic Change 65: 103–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Still, C. J., Foster, P. N., and Schneider, S. H. (1999). Simulating the effects of climate change on tropical montane cloud forests. Nature 389: 608–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stott, P. A. (2003). Attribution of regional-scale temperature changes to anthropogenic and natural causes. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 1728–1731.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiedtke, M. (1993). Representation of clouds in large-scale models. Monthly Weather Review 121: 3040–3061.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trenberth, K. E., Wielicki, B. A., Genio, A. D. Del, et al. (2002). Changes in tropical clouds and radiation. Science 296: 2095.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trenberth, K. E., Fasullo, J., and Smith, L. (2005). Trends and variability in column integrated atmospheric water vapor. Climate Dynamics 24: 741–758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trenberth, K. E., Jones, P. D., Ambenje, P., et al. (2007). Observations: surface and atmospheric climate change. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eds. Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., et al., pp. 235–336. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Molen, M. K., Dolman, A. J., Waterloo, M. J., and Bruijnzeel, L. A. (2006). Climate is affected more by maritime than by continental land use change: a multiple-scale analysis. Global and Planetary Change 54: 128–149.Google Scholar
Walker, G. K., Sud, Y. C., and Atlas, R. (1995). Impact of the ongoing Amazonian deforestation on local precipitation: a GCM simulation study. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 76: 346–361.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, J. M., and Hobbs, P. V. (1977). Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Wang, J., Bras, R. L., and Eltahir, E. A. B. (2000). The impact of observed deforestation on the mesoscale distribution of rainfall and clouds in Amazonia. Journal of Hydrometeorology 1: 267–286.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welch, R. M., Asefi, S., Zeng, J., et al. (2008). Biogeography of tropical montane cloud forests. I. Remote sensing of cloud base heights. Journal of Applied Meterology and Climatology 47: 960–975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wielicki, B. A., Wong, T., Allen, R. P., et al. (2002). Evidence for large decadal variability in the tropical mean radiative energy budget. Science 295: 841–844.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yang, F., Kumar, A., Schlesinger, M. E., and Wang, W. (2003). Intensity of hydrological cycles in warmer climates. Journal of Climate 16: 2419–2423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×