Trude Storelvmo – Potential climate tipping point hiding in Southern Ocean Clouds

CESOC kindly invites you to a talk given by Prof. Trude Storelvmo, Section for Meteorology and Oceanography at the University of Oslo, with the title:

Potential climate tipping point hiding in Southern Ocean Clouds

Date: 21 October 2025
Time: 16:00 CEST
Location: University of Cologne

It will also be streamed via zoom:
for online participation, please contact info@cesoc.net

Abstract:

The Southern Ocean is known to be among the cloudiest places on Earth, and the important contribution of Southern Ocean clouds to Earth’s energy budget is undisputed. By changing their composition in response to warming, clouds in this region currently limit the rate of warming, as they become brighter with increasing temperature and thus exert a stabilising feedback on the climate system. Here, based on multiple lines of evidence, we show that in the current state of the Southern Ocean, this negative feedback happens to be maximised. Evidence based on radiative transfer calculations, in situ measurements, satellite remote sensing and Earth System Modelling all point in the same direction; we currently find ourselves in a climate state which allows Southern Ocean clouds to contribute maximally to climate stability. An important implication of this discovery is that the consequences of moving away from this climate state are wide-reaching, as this would be expected to shift our climate into a state that reacts more strongly to any perturbation, most notably that due to changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This adds urgency to effective climate mitigation implementation in order to limit warming and thus preserve the stabilising climate effect of Southern Ocean clouds.

Bio: https://www.mn.uio.no/geo/english/people/aca/metos/truds/