University of Hamburg - to research, to teach, to educate and form, to homepage
MI
Meteorological Institute

Photo: Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center

Study on shortwave water vapor feedback

6 August 2025

In a new study, CLICCS researcher Florian Römer and colleagues explore the clear-sky shortwave water vapor feedback, a lesser-known mechanism that amplifies warming by increasing the atmosphere’s ability to trap sunlight as water vapor levels rise. While the longwave (infrared) effects of water vapor are well understood, this shortwave component has remained under the radar.

Full open-access study in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science: Roemer, F. E., S. A. Buehler, and K. P. Menang (2025), How to think about the clear-sky shortwave water vapor feedback

Latest articles

ISS40 Thunderheads

Photo: NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

01.10.2025|Research
PhD position in stratocumulus climate feedback

We are recruiting a PhD student to investigate how global stratocumulus cloud cover responds to rising CO2 and sea surface temperatures, and the associated radiative feedback. The work will use an ensemble of global km-scale circulation model (ICON) simulations with varied turbulence, radiation...

Satellite image of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai volcano

Photo: NOAA/Alamy

04.07.2025|Research
Global ripple: The Hunga eruption, a Nature research highlight

The GRL article "Transient Darkening of Low-Level Liquid Clouds by the 2022 Hunga Lamb Wave Observed in GOES-R Imagery" by Ákos Horváth et al., describes how the volcanic eruption temporarily darkened clouds on the other side of the planet. This study was recently featured in Nature as a research...