Florent Brient

ETH Zurich
Sonneggstrasse 5
8092 Zurich
Switzerland

Office: NO G 60
Phone:
florent.brient@erdw.ethz.ch

Biography

I am a postdoctoral researcher working with Tapio Schneider in the Climate Dynamics group since October 2013. Before, I worked as a post-doc with Alex Hall in UCLA and completed my PhD in 2012 under the supervision of Sandrine Bony at the LMD/IPSL in Paris.

My research interests consist in understanding physical mechanisms underlying cloud responses to the global warming. I mainly study responses of tropical low-clouds to perturbations since they induce the largest uncertainties in climate models and explain a significant part of the spread of climate sensitivity.

My goal is to find some interesting observational tests suggesting constrains of climate sensitivity or cloud feedback. My tests consist mainly on climatological metrics (vertical shape of of low-clouds) or temporal variability (cloud response to surface change). I’m also interesting in the coupling between  hydrological cycle, cloud feedbacks and circulation. I also start using the high-resolution PyCLES model for process-oriented analysis of low-cloud feedback.

Publications

  • Adam, O., Schneider, T., Brient, F., 2017: Regional and seasonal variations of the double-ITCZ bias in CMIP5 models. Climate Dynamics, 51, 101–117.
    [PDF] [Official Version]

  • Schneider, T., Teixeira, J., Bretherton, C. S., Brient, F., Pressel, K. G., Schär, C. , Siebesma, A. P., 2017: Climate goals and computing the future of clouds. Nature Climate Change, 7, 3-5.
    [Official version] [Free view-only version][PDF]

  • Brient, F. and T. Schneider, 2016: Constraints on climate sensitivity from space-based measurements of low-cloud reflection. Journal of Climate, 29, 5821-5835.
    [PDF][SI] [Official version] [Cloud variability analysis code] [Model weighting code]

  • Adam, O., T. Schneider, F. Brient, and T. Bischoff, 2016: Relation of the double-ITCZ bias to the atmospheric energy budget in climate models. Geophysical Research Letters, 43, 7670–7677.
    [PDF] [SI] [Official version]

  • Brient, F., T. Schneider, Z. Tan, S. Bony, X. Qu, and A. Hall, 2016: Shallowness of tropical low clouds as a predictor of climate models’ response to warming. Climate Dynamics, 47, 433-449. Correction, Climate Dynamics, 2021.
    [PDF] [Official version] [Correction PDF]

Blog Posts