Research
Why similar changes in cloud cover can have different climate effects
Phys.org ·
The Brief
- Marine low clouds over the world's eastern subtropical oceans strongly influence Earth's temperature by reflecting sunlight back to space.
- How these clouds change as the planet warms is one of the biggest uncertainties in predicting the severity of future warming.
- The story reports that similar changes in cloud cover can have different climate effects.
Why it matters
Uncertainty about how marine low clouds respond to warming feeds directly into estimates of how severe future warming will be, so cloud behaviour matters for climate projections.
Who’s affected
- climate scientists
- climate modellers
- anyone following projections of future warming
- #clouds
- #climate change
- #marine low clouds
- #climate feedback
- #cloud cover
Marine low clouds over the world's eastern subtropical oceans strongly influence Earth's temperature by reflecting sunlight back to space. How these clouds change as the planet warms is one of the biggest uncertainties in predicting the severity of future warming.
Timeline
Earth News article on the research published (via phys.org)
Earth News - Earth Science News, Earth Science, Climate Change
Why similar changes in cloud cover can have different climate effects