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CLOUD FEEDBACKS

The cooling of light rains in a warming world

Recent changes to how clouds are represented in global models, especially over the Southern Ocean, resulted in increased climate warming. Correcting rain processes in a model shows improved cloud representation but leads to a greatly enhanced negative feedback, offsetting documented increases in model climate sensitivity.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of cloud feedback processes.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).

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Correspondence to Graeme L. Stephens.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Stephens, G.L. The cooling of light rains in a warming world. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 468–470 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01056-z

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