Da Yang
University of California-Davis, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Water vapor is lighter than dry air, so moist air is slightly more buoyant than dry air. Because vapor makes up only a small fraction of the atmosphere, this effect has usually been treated as too small to matter.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
- Topics
vapor buoyancy
water vapor
tropical atmosphere
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Test whether vapor buoyancy, the lift that moist air gets from water vapor's light molecular mass, warms the dry regions of the tropical atmosphere, using satellite observations and numerical simulations.
- Determine how vapor-buoyancy-driven warming affects outgoing longwave radiation, static stability and cloud distribution in the tropics, using models of varying complexity.
- Diagnose state-of-the-art climate simulations to assess how vapor buoyancy influences climate sensitivity and how well these models represent it.
- Develop course modules and rotating-tank experiments on how water vapor shapes large-scale circulation, for university students and Sacramento-area high school teachers.
More about the research
It has therefore been left out of most studies of climate and large-scale air motion. The PI has shown, however, that cold air rises in the tropical free troposphere because of this vapor buoyancy. The free troposphere is the part of the lower atmosphere above the layer that touches the ground. That finding suggests vapor buoyancy may matter for how the tropics and the climate behave.
Why it matters
Climate models disagree about how much Earth will warm, and part of that uncertainty comes from how clouds and tropical circulation respond. Showing whether vapor buoyancy changes tropical temperature, clouds and outgoing heat could help modelers represent it correctly. That could reduce uncertainty in climate projections that governments and communities use to plan for future change.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Angel Adames-Corraliza
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test whether colder lower-stratospheric temperatures during the easterly QBO phase strengthen the MJO by promoting cirrus clouds and their infrared radiative feedback, using COSMIC, CALIPSO and MLS satellite data plus reanalyses.
Andrea Jenney
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether the net cooling cloud radiative effect over oceanic ITCZs comes partly from differences in energy carried away by ocean circulation between stormy and calm regions, using reanalyses and CESM2 slab-ocean simulations.
Brentha Thurairajah
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how much of the large-scale gravity wave activity in the thermosphere comes from the troposphere versus from sources above the stratosphere, using controlled SD-WACCM-X whole-atmosphere model simulations.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
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