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Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming
- nurettin 2y agoWait, doesn't that mean less greenhouse effect?
- roter 2y agoClouds have two main impacts: reflect incoming, shortwave radiation back to space and absorb (and re-radiation up and down) outgoing, longwave radiation from the surface. The interplay and relative proportion between these two impacts has long been a challenge and depends upon the cloud altitude (low/high), composition (water,ice), and optical depth.
- SamBam 2y agoNo, greenhouse effect is mostly controlled by CO2, although water vapor plays a role. But clouds mostly act to reflect sunlight back to space, so fewer clouds will mean more warming, not less.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoYou are right that water is a green house gas. You are wrong to assume the only water in the air is clouds. Clouds is basically water condensation. That happens a bit less in warm air; but the water is still there. You need cool air for condensation to happen. Warm air can hold more water in gas form. Clouds reflect light and infrared radiation from the sun. Less clouds means more of that heat gets absorbed and then trapped by green house gases. Like water.
- morsch 2y agoWater vapor in the atmosphere is complicated. At some altitudes, it causes atmospheric warming, at others, it increases albedo -- reflectivity -- and thus is cooling. Of course wrt to anthropogenic climate change the focus is usually on CO2; but man made water vapor emissions are relevant eg. in the context of air travel.
- re-thc 2y ago[flagged]
- jijijijij 2y agoThere is no cloud. Just future people's problems.
- dylanmulvaney 2y ago[flagged]
- goodluckchuck 2y agoI think it’s global warming when it’s warming, climate change when things are different, and atmospheric stagnation where things haven’t changed.
- therealpygon 2y agoYes, but that unfortunate choice of labeling is what allows those who are less scientifically intelligent to say things to all their friends like, “Look at all this snow, ‘global warming’ right!” As if that is some sort of slam dunk against a “climate agenda”. Even when the trend is for worsening storm seasons, more and more wild temperature swings, and the increasing amount of land burned by wildfires, there are plenty who will still just claim it is “bad luck” and a natural process because “we don’t have weather data to go back millions of years”. A lot of that response was the direct result of the choice to call it “global warming” instead of the more accepted (at the time) “climate change”, which is what I think they were pointing out.
- KaiserPro 2y agoIt was always global warming, its just that when it was a cold winter people would say "Oh So iTs GlObAl WaRmInG". Hence climate change, because that covers the other stuff that may or may not happen.
- rikafurude21 2y agoCloud-exit must be reversed! Move to AWS for mother earth!
- bezier-curve 2y ago[flagged]
- zwnow 2y agoYou really think we can unite earth to do something about it? Did u witness the world wide right wing shift? There are people still not believing climate change is real...
- mikevm 2y ago[flagged]
- bezier-curve 2y agoMy brain turns off when someone says "leftist", tell us you're a conservative without telling us. The internet used to be nuanced, those were the days.
- postalrat 2y agoPeople not listening to others is what is getting us in this mess. Wake up sheeple!
- bojan 2y agoChina also has more people than the US and the EU combined, and per capita it pollutes way less than the US. Additionally, the left is not in charge almost anywhere in the EU.
- banqjls 2y ago>Additionally, the left is not in charge almost anywhere in the EU. Basically an overwhelming majority of the countries + the commission?
- tomrod 2y ago> the team has turned to a single satellite, NASA’s Terra, which has been monitoring the planet for nearly a quarter-century. Looking at the same cloud systems, the team found exactly the same trends, with cloud coverage falling by about 1.5% per decade, Tselioudis says. “It’s only now that the signal seems to be coming out of the noise.” Bjorn Stevens, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, says a couple percentage points may not sound important. “But if you calculate these trends, it’s massive,” he says. “This would indicate a cloud feedback that’s off the charts.” Hurricanes and Cyclones will get worse. This is bad news for folks that wish to live near many coasts.
- dataviz1000 2y agoIncluding inland mountains 700km from the coast like in Vietnam and North Carolina which both got destroyed last year as tropical depressions dumped historical levels of rain.
- energy123 2y agoWhy mountains in particular?
- dataviz1000 2y agoAs the warm moist air is pushed upwards in mountains, on the windward side, the air will drop in temperature and will not be be able to hold the moisture dropping it as rain.
- jmclnx 2y agoInteresting, the area I live in is expected to get more rain as climate change gets worse. So I would think we would have more cloud cover. But the article is about "reflective clouds". As I look out my window, I see dark clouds right now as opposed to white fluffy clouds. Will need to note the colors as time goes on for my fully non-scientific surveys :)
- goodluckchuck 2y agoClouds are all the same color. The darkness we see is the shadows from other clouds.
- jijijijij 2y agoHow come you sometimes see very dark, lonely clouds in blue skies?
- epohs 2y agoLikely because they are tall and tilted in a direction facing the sun, so that the moisture blocks more of the light than it would if the sun was hitting it at a more oblique angle.
- Rexxar 2y agoYour relative position to the sun and the cloud.
- jijijijij 2y agoI am not convinced. This would mean it could only be "blocking" the sun. If anything, it would be atmospheric light reflections blocked. In any case, it's not "other clouds". I think diffraction has to play a role. Why wouldn't it? Dense, or raining clouds certainly have different water droplet sizes and shapes than fine, fluffy clouds. They may even reflect the ground or sky at some point, I imagine, like the ocean.
- belinder 2y ago
- kacesensitive 2y agoEarth gets over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day—10,000 times more than humanity uses. Losing just a fraction of our cloud cover means a massive, invisible throttle is coming off the climate system. If this trend holds, we’re not just warming—we’re stepping on the gas.
- dbacar 2y agoterawatt is not an energy unit.
- spacedcowboy 2y agoR̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶x̶t̶…̶ - A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶ A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶1̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶ - A̶ ̶T̶e̶r̶a̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶.̶ [edit: The earth receives 14.9 ZettaWatts of solar power per day, and 173 Petawatts per second, I was reading it as 173 PW over a day, in which case the above works fine. Mea culpa] See: https://gosolarquotes.com.au/amount-of-solar-energy-hitting-earth/ https://gosolarquotes.com.au/amount-of-solar-energy-hitting-...
- treyd 2y agoYeah the units cancel, that's the issue. The phrasing implies that after half a day it's received 85k terawatts which doesn't make any sense. Power (kg m^2 / s^3) * Time (s) = Energy (kg m^2 / s^2) Now from context it's obvious that what was meant is that Earth continually receives 170 terawatts from the sun. The phrasing is technically inaccurate, but it's a turn of phrase that works fine.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jessekv 2y agoso... close... petawatts ;)
- RecentlyThawed 2y agoHow large a scale and with how many countries participating would cloud seeding be able to reverse these effects? Last I remember it was only a few countries in Asia that were attempting anything of the sort.
- mrpopo 2y agoDisregard the obvious environmental risks of spraying silver iodide in the air, cloud seeding will artificially redirect rainfall in specific areas, which may deprive downstream regions of water, harming biodiversity. Note that cloud seeding is currently used for drought management, not global warming mitigation.
- kibwen 2y agoCloud seeding aims to increase precipitation, not to increase evaporation. It might actually reduce cloud cover overall, since precipitation causes moisture to fall out of the air.
- melling 2y agoHow many countries participating would reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. It’s 2025 and we’re still having stupid discussions. We burn more coal than ever! Yeah, we’re so close to peak usage… We’ve known coal was a big problem for 40 years: https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=Dk-Xa_MHgFhPl2yE https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?si=Dk-Xa_MHgFhPl2yE
- DennisP 2y agoThere's a serious proposal to do that with a fleet of wind-powered ships, seeding low-lying clouds with seawater. Wikipedia cites a cost of $5 billion/year for a large deployment, and a maximum potential of offsetting two-thirds of our current anthropogenic warming. If we stopped doing it then things would be back to "normal" in a couple weeks. There would be local weather changes, but less than what's caused by unabated heating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening A disadvantage of solar radiation management like this is that it does nothing for ocean acidification. But it could buy us time by heading off feedback effects that cause the planet to emit a lot more greenhouse gas of its own, due to melting permafrost, forest fires, etc.
- themullet 2y agoIt's worth noting Neptune clouds are doing similar due to the suns 11 year solar cycle. https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/neptunes-disappearing-clouds-linked-to-the-solar-cycle/ https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/neptunes-disappeari... AI summary; "Yes, astronomers have observed that Neptune's prominent clouds have largely disappeared, and NASA scientists suggest this phenomenon is linked to the sun's 11-year solar cycle and its impact on Neptune's atmosphere"
- shimmeringleaf 2y agoOh dear, that does not sound very promising. Seems like the simulation results mentioned in this article might not be so outlandish, and rather a relevant potential worst-case scenario projection: https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degree...
- matthewdgreen 2y agoWe are going to need geoengineering solutions to manage solar radiation, and we are going to need to deploy them relatively soon. I don’t know if this will undo the cloud effects, but there’s no more time for screwing around.
- NX9mqsSv8 2y ago[dead]
- jfengel 2y agoAnd yet screwing around is exactly what is going to happen. We've just guaranteed four years of exacerbating the problem from one of the major greenhouse gas producers. I'm not a fan of geoengineering, which I see as "screwing around" because we don't know nearly enough to predict its effects. Nonetheless, we may well reach a point where it cannot make things worse, and that point just became even more likely.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoI don’t know if we should actually deploy geoengineering. My fear is that we will soon reach a point where we’re pretty certain that we’re headed towards a major tipping point, and even aggressive GHG reductions won’t be enough. (It’s possible that the findings in TFA are the literal representation of that realization.) We need a hail-Mary option at that point and we might need it in a hurry. BTW I am actually cautiously optimistic about the GHG reduction piece. We’re way past where we should be at this stage, but rapid decarbonization now looks like it will be at least technically possible. Most global emissions are in China and Asia, and China is actually deploying the technology we need to eliminate those emissions. The US shouldn’t be screwing around the way it is, but I’m hopeful that what’s happening with renewable technology costs in Asia will eventually be more meaningful than any short term political interference that’s limited to the US. (This is very much a lemonade-out-of-lemons opinion, but the alternative is to be very depressed.)
- amazingamazing 2y ago[flagged]
- Electrcition234 2y ago[dead]
- NX9mqsSv8 2y ago[dead]
- NX9mqsSv8 2y ago[flagged]
- iamacyborg 2y agoFortunately real scientists do believe this stuff so the comments from some random climate denialing bloke on a forum are irrelevant.
- NX9mqsSv8 2y ago[dead]
- wizzwizz4 2y agoI know this comment is just a list of fully-general counterarguments that can be dropped (with small modifications) on any scientific article, but you've invoked Poe's law. If this is parody, then it's an excellent parody; but if it's not, it's an almost maximally-uninsightful comment.
- NX9mqsSv8 2y ago[dead]
- honeybadger1 2y ago[flagged]
- ninetyninenine 2y agoWhy don’t you listen to the scientists? The scientists are more inline with the left. I’m saying this as someone who hates leftist bs.
- jfengel 2y agoYes. You should listen to apocalyptic omens only from scientists. If one particular ideology happens to be consistently agreeing or disagreeing with the scientists, then you should take that pattern into account when it comes to choosing who should deal with the consequences. Those are matters of opinion, albeit informed by the facts. The fact remain independent of ideology, and any claim that they are the result of an epically vast conspiracy of scientists should require an extremely high standard of evidence.
- Shekelphile 2y agoMy pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point. It is worth mentioning that we are already in the last few hundred million years of earth's lifespan -- the sun was much dimmer last time the planet had this much GHG and warming going on. We may have already set the conditions for the oceans to boil away and the heat death of our planet without massive geoengineering.
- justinzollars 2y agoif it bleeds it leads.
- jmcgough 2y agoThese are climate scientists, not tabloid reporters. But don't worry, they'll be fired and silenced by the feds soon enough. Everything is fine, please ignore the rapid increase in tornados and hear waves.
- banqjls 2y ago> My pet theory is that we are only a few decades away from turning earth into venus 2.0 at this point. It feels like we keep finding new catastrophic tipping points every few months at this point. Given that the glaciers should’ve all melted by now, and that we can’t even predict with certainty whether it will rain tomorrow, I wouldn’t pay much attention to predictions.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoEver been in the famous Mer de Glace in France ? In the 1980s they had to build a cable car to descend from the old train station (which the glacier _almost_ reached at some point) to the surface level of the glacier, which had started descending. By the time they finished building the cable car, the glacier had descended so _much_ _more_ that in the 90s an extra 500 steps staircase had to be built to cover the ever-growing gap from the cable car stop to the new surface of the glacier. ~5 years ago, this gap was so large it would take an hour or so to climb up/down, so they had to build _a 2nd cable car_ to cover the new gap. The new cable car even when it was in construction _already_ did no longer reach the glacier, as the glacier has descended another 20 steps since construction started: https://www.chamonix.net/english/news/chamonix-new-telecabine-montenvers-mer-de-glace https://www.chamonix.net/english/news/chamonix-new-telecabin... You can see with your own eyes not only how it is disappearing, but how much the speed at it which disappears increases year-by-year. If you ever plan to visit it, better do it so now; I find it unlikely there will be anything visitable left of it by the end of next decade.
- srameshc 2y ago> Climate scientists now need to figure out what’s causing these cloud changes.. Only if we have enough funding for the scientists to study these important changes for the sake of future generations
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- imchillyb 2y agoThere is an ancient text that predicts every body of water becoming like blood. There is an algae that flourishes in warm water that almost solidifies water into a reddish goop. That goop is much like blood. We, society, are making this happen. And, it’s happening at a prodigious rate. The earth’s cooling mechanisms rely upon these bodies of water. The warmer the water the greater the chances of these algal blooms. Yay us.
- iknowSFR 2y agoThis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_algal_bloom?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_algal_bloom?wprov=sfti...
- perihelions 2y ago(.pdf) https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3974146/v1/df98526c-73b7-4e74-b304-f9740fb8ed1d.pdf https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-3974146/v1/df9... ("Oceanic cloud trends during the satellite era and their radiative signatures")
- winter_blue 2y agoI just noticed that the author of the paper has a @nasa email address, and I feel sad thinking that this kind of research won't be happening anymore soon, because Republicans don't like the truth and prefer to lie / deny / obscure the truth about climate change, rather than face it sincerely head-on.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- janjanmax 2y agoThe earth has dimmed 1 Watt/Meter. The loss of cloud coverage is due to Carbon Dioxide energy. It doesn’t allow cloud formation as the freezing point is increased. This CO2 effect on clouds was first published in 2017. The weather models of the 80s, 90s and oughts did not account for this. A 2019 Model showed high global temperatures by 2028-2032 in the high improbable range; however, those temperatures were experienced with a very close precision in 2024. You all can look this up.
- ingohelpinger 2y agocloud seeding?
- hintymad 2y agoA naive question: why is global warming bad for the earth, especially for the environmentalists? I mean I get it that it will be bad for human, but the biosphere thrived in much warmer pre-historical ages, right? Or rain forests still have the highest biodiversity nowadays, right? For people who hate human activities to preserve a thriving earth, wouldn't they welcome global warming?
- spott 2y agoOn an ecological scale, it isn’t the heat that is a problem, it is the speed it is increasing. In the past, temperature changes have been slow enough for evolution and ecological systems to adapt, but now it is happening fast enough that these systems can’t adapt fast enough.
- gmuslera 2y agoSpeed. Adaptation to change takes time, fast changes lead to mass extinctions. And we are not in a stable situation, we don’t know wha will be the new normal, nor when it will be reached, and finding more positive feedback loops like this one put everything in the extreme side of things.