Clouds' role in global warming studied
October 9, 2000
By Environmental News Network staff
If the current warming trend continues, don't depend on low-level
clouds to come to the Earth's rescue, according to NASA
researchers.
A cloud's thickness and brightness (its ability to reflect
sunlight) influences how the planet heats and cools. Clouds can
act as a natural shield by reflecting sunlight back into space,
creating cooler temperatures. And clouds can also wrap the skies
like a blanket, sealing in warmth.
But what's unclear is how clouds will react when the Earth gets
warmer, as it seems destined to do.
Some climatologists predict that a warmer atmosphere will
evaporate more water, forming denser and brighter clouds that
will reflect more sunlight back into space and cooling things
off.
However, after three years of observations of low stratus,
cumulus and stratocumulus clouds over land, Anthony Del Genio of
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies discovered that when
air temperatures were higher, clouds were thinner and thus less
capable of reflecting sunlight. These thinner clouds occurred
regardless of weather conditions, season or time of day.
"The bottoms of the clouds rise with warmer temperatures, while
the top of the cloud stays the same so the clouds become
thinner," explained Del Genio. "When low clouds are present,
warmer air flowing over land tends to be drier. As a parcel of
dry air rises, it has to rise farther before it saturates with
enough water to form the cloud base."
And, Del Genio disputes a theory that rising carbon dioxide
levels would have only a slight impact on global temperatures
because the theory doesn't take into account real world cloud
behavior.
"The minimum amount of warming predicted by scientists - 3
degrees Fahrenheit - should be increased by at least 1 F as a
result of the new findings," said Del Genio.
The current range of 21st century warming, according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is 3-8 F. The IPCC
will release its updated global warming assessment early next
year.
Del Genio studied more than 3,000 individual cloud "snapshots"
collected between 1994 and 1997 at the Department of Energy's
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains field
station.
Using a unique system of ground-based and satellite instruments,
each snapshot recorded the air temperature, the height of the
bottom and top of the cloud, and the amount of liquid water in
the cloud. The more liquid water in a cloud and the thicker the
cloud, the more opaque it is and the more sunlight it reflects.
"We concluded that over more than half of the world, when the
temperatures were warmer, the low-level clouds reflect less
sunlight, which will only exacerbate global warming," said Del
Genio.
The link between cloud thinning and temperature was initially
observed in 1992 over much of the world with long-term satellite
observations. George Tselioudis, William Rossow and David Rind of
the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies published the
observation using the NASA-funded International Satellite Cloud
Climatology Project database, a global composite of cloud
observations from international weather satellites.
"In the larger context of the global warming debate I'd say we
shouldn't look for clouds to get us out of this mess," said Del
Genio. "This is just one aspect of clouds, but this is the part
people assumed would make global warming less severe."
Del Genio and colleagues' research was published in the Oct. 1
issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of
Climate.
SOURCE: Environmental News Network (ENN)
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