Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Andrew Dessler
CIRES Visiting Fellow
2013-2014

Sabbatical
Ph.D., Harvard University

Project: Understand­ing long-term varia­tions in stratospheric water vapor

Andrew Dessler is a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. His re­search focuses on climate feedbacks and the ef­fect of clouds on the climate system. While at CIRES, he is working with ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Division to investigate the response of stratospheric water vapor to climate change. Because stratospheric water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, if it increases as the climate warms, that could amplify the initial warm­ing—resulting in a stratospheric water vapor feedback. Additionally, changes in stratospher­ic water vapor impact both climate and ozone abundance, so it’s possible that climate change might affect ozone. “It turns out that not too many people have thought about the climate impacts of stratospheric water vapor,” Dessler says. “It’s possible that a better understanding of this might help us resolve the differences among various climate models’ predictions of warming during the 21st century and help us better constrain the climate sensitivity.”

Sponsor: David Fahey