Frida Bender

Earth’s climate is changing rapidly, due to anthropogenic (human) activity. The physics behind enhanced greenhouse effect and global warming have been known for more than a hundred years, but because the climate system is complex and comprises numerous feedback mechanisms, we can’t say exactly how sensitive the climate is to our influence – how much warmer will it get, and how soon? The greatest uncertainties are related to clouds and how their abundance and properties change when the climate changes. As senior lecturer in climate modelling at the Department of Meteorology and the Bolin Centre for Climate Research, I focus my research on the role of clouds in the climate system – how clouds are affected by increasing temperatures and how cloud properties change with varying abundance of aerosols, or tiny particles such as dust, smoke or air pollution, in the air. Using global climate models we can produce simulations of past and present climate variations, evaluate them against observations, and improve our understanding and representation of the processes that determine the sensitivity of the climate, to make better projections of future climate.