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so as long as clouds are above snow/ice they have a net warming effect and if they are above open ocean they have a net cooling effect?
by singularity2001 6y ago
so as long as clouds are above snow/ice they have a net warming effect and if they are above open ocean they have a net cooling effect?
- gibspaulding 6y agoI only skimmed the article, but it had me wondering about the same. There's been talk before about trying to form artificial clouds over the ocean in order to reduce warming. I'd be very curious to hear how this might relate to that. Is it possible that man made clouds could drift to the poles and make everything worse?
- shagie 6y agoThey can be relatively localized. Consider contrails, which with the grounding of air travel in the US after 9/11 had climate impacts that could be studied. https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment/ https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_t... One of the interesting aspects of that is that it returned to normal (well, contrails being normal) rapidly.
- m12k 6y agoIt would make sense that it depends whether the clouds have a higher or lower albedo than the surface they cover
- CWuestefeld 6y agoThat's what TFA says. I imagine that the latitude matters, too. Near the poles, the sun is coming in at such an oblique angle that any given surface area isn't getting much heating effect from it anyway, so it's easier for the insulating blanket effect to be a net positive.