Where are the storm clouds of yesteryear?
...over time. So it’s not just that there are fewer clouds; the boundaries of the zones where storm clouds tend to form have also been shrinking by 1.5% to 3%...
02 Jul, 2025| Science Notes
...over time. So it’s not just that there are fewer clouds; the boundaries of the zones where storm clouds tend to form have also been shrinking by 1.5% to 3%...
From the CO2Science Archive: Are there linkages between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols and liquid-water clouds that operate on a global scale? ... and that could be responsible for a...
...water in liquid-phase clouds compared with unpolluted clouds. Measurements of polluted clouds downwind of various anthropogenic sources—such as oil refineries, smelters, coal-fired power plants, cities, wildfires and ships—reveal that aerosol-induced...
...cloudy regions of the planet. In cloudy regions the SW absorption rose sharply, leading the authors to conclude that clouds became more permeable to sunlight over this interval. That phenomenon,...
...in the amounts of low clouds and high plus mid-level clouds that occurred between 2000 and 2004 on total radiative forcing (solar plus thermal). Paper reviewed: Palle, E., Goode, P.R.,...
We have talked previously about the extreme difficulties of modelling clouds, and why it is a problem for the science-is-settled crowd since clouds strongly influence the climate. A change of...
Continuing our dive down into Ole Humlum’s Climate4You.com data collection, this week we get our heads up into the clouds and our metaphor in a knot to learn about clouds...
In 2021 we reported on a pair of studies (here and here) that analysed satellite-measured data and found that clouds were not shielding the Earth’s surface from incoming solar radiation...
...of that warming on other processes. Which is also true of the effect of aerosols, because they do some cooling on their own but also interact with clouds in ways...
From the CO2Science Archive: Writing that “regions of marine stratocumulus clouds play an important role in maintaining Earth's global energy balance,” Rapp (2015) introduced her study of the subject by...
...characteristics of clouds. So why did cloud cover change? That’s the real question. At a simple level, the Earth maintains a balance of incoming energy from the sun and outgoing...
...drove the recent warming, CO2 isn’t to blame, the clouds will eventually come back and future warming will be less than expected, or they won’t but it’s nothing to do...
Look it up, way up, because clouds are where the action is. In a climate model, CO2 doesn’t do most of the warming. Instead that honour goes to water vapour,...
From the CO2Science archive: In this intriguing study, Kay et al. (2016) used space-borne lidar observations from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite to evaluate cloud...
...fewer clouds on Earth. Whereas this paper finds that more sun means more clouds on Neptune, and their theory is that more UV is behind it. The press release (yeah,...
...climate heating, by seeding clouds in Tamaulipas and Baja California with silver iodide. The only hitch is, it’s quackery. Nature says “scientists warn that there is scant evidence that cloud...
...you can’t blame people for it, so they don’t like to think about it. Unless they can find a way to blame people for clouds not behaving. Clouds are as...
...progresses. But how significant of a bearing? For now, initial indications point to reassuring conclusions rather than catastrophic ones.” Clouds matter. As the piece winds up: “Clouds envelop two-thirds of...
...clouds, thin and composed mostly of ice particles, covering vast areas of the Earth every day, especially in the western tropical pacific. Cirrus clouds have a net warming effect because...
...of those Armageddon folks like to talk about. The big uncertainty is water vapour and especially clouds. And people don’t know what clouds do. If you have clouds during the...
...to be overestimated today.”) We especially draw attention to his opening description of why climate models get clouds wrong, and indeed why climatologists themselves misunderstand clouds. It is that “In...
...greenhouse gases. That something may be clouds. As physicist William van Wijngaarden explained in our "simple physics" video, no one really knows what clouds will do. Svensmark proposed that a...
...they assume clouds do stuff that real clouds don’t do. Like Joni Mitchell, modelers have looked at clouds from both sides now, but mainly from one side: that as the...
...to cope with clouds because the computers operate on a macro scale and clouds are crucially a micro phenomenon. (There’s also some suspicious fine-tuning going on with the aerosols needed...
...and billions of dollars spent, our models are lousy at predicting climate change, in large part because we still don't know how to model clouds. And pretending they don’t matter...
...air that form nuclei around which water vapour condenses, forming the droplets that make up visible clouds. Where do cloud condensation nuclei come from? That’s the question. The answer is...
...a round Earth. In our video tackling the "Simple Physics slogan", Professor William van Wijngaarden observed that no one really knows how clouds will respond to greenhouse warming. So what’s...
...have also measured a decrease in global cloud cover by over 7%. That allows greater solar heating (graphic B). Fewer clouds better correlates with a warming of the earth and...
...See, if you fiddle how the models simulate clouds, you get a sharp increase in climate sensitivity to GHGs, at least in the simulations, which in the end is all...
...the relief, circulatory structures at different scales and vertical thermal profile favourable to the rising of air mass with development of clouds of sufficient thickness (e.g. cumulonimbus and nimbostratus clouds)...
...projects. And collapse of his vaunted GFANZ is so spectacular, and ignominious, that it deserves its own separate item. Banks rushed into its Net-Zero Banking Alliance subsidiary, trailing clouds of...
...handle clouds well and even small reductions in cloud cover explain a lot of warming without greenhouse gases having anything to do with it. The Schillinger study involved taking data...
...mass with development of clouds of sufficient thickness (e.g. cumulonimbus and nimbostratus clouds) and (3) microphysical characteristics of cloud environment favourable to magnify droplets or ice crystals to give precipitation....
...may get different names because they bring high winds, black clouds, dramatic downpours and occasionally funnel clouds that can do a lot of damage. And reflexive warnings that climate change...
...keep the water in clouds from turning to ice too quickly. Unfortunately the changes in cloud behaviour have resulted in the models’ climate sensitivity to CO2 bumping up a notch....
...clouds. And that under some circumstances clouds reflect back sunlight and hence heat from the sun. If true, this finding means that the climate models with their every-feedback-is-positive built-in bias...
...Effect itself is another very interesting negative feedback mechanism. According to Lindzen, a vital impact of warming is that it diminishes upper-level cirrus clouds. But such clouds themselves contribute to...
...will support formation of more stratospheric clouds over the South Pole, which will allow the accumulation of more chemical compounds that deplete ozone as the clouds break up in the...
...turn tend to seed low-altitude clouds that reflect heat, so its strength or weakness has a major impact on climate although as computer modellers can’t cope with clouds they tend...
...increased shortwave radiation, aka sunlight, caused by changes in cloud cover. Again with the thinning clouds... it’s starting to sound like a pattern. We have recently talked about some new...
...had clouds that weren’t reflective enough so they cranked them up, threw in some aerosols, had the 20th-century warming vanish, and kluged their parameters until it came back, which took...
...NASA instruments in space … called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), have detected a marked rise in the amount of solar energy the planet has absorbed...
...binds gas particles into larger and larger molecules that sometimes become aerosols large enough to form water droplets and from there to become clouds. Clouds play an enormous role in...
...warming to 2C this is also the case.’” Five-year increments? The model can’t even deal with individual years, let alone more granular things like clouds? You might have told us...
...GCM’s poor performance in simulating seasonal variation of clouds and monthly anomalies of air temperature and water vapor.” What it means In light of these several shortcomings, we have to...
...and then claim infallible precision for the results. In fact the models dramatically oversimplify all kinds of things including the physics of clouds (in part by operating on a macro...
...“we have a situation where we’re going to have this extreme heat and these crazy heat domes, these high-pressure systems that don’t move, and there are no clouds to reflect...
...fairly small warming from CO2 increases atmospheric water vapour and that vapour, including in the form of clouds, then traps more heat, thus amplifying the initial effect of the CO2....
...clouds. Thus Canary Media recently hyped: “A fusion firm that’s already making money – but not from selling power/ Wisconsin’s Shine Technologies is ‘practicing fusion’ with imaging and medical products...
...on a heroic expedition to the frozen north: “The scientists walk across a frozen Arctic Ocean, dark specks in a sea of white. Pale clouds loom low over the bundled...
...for fire control. The satellites that produce those data have difficulty seeing through clouds and may count the same fire multiple times, so they are not recommended for official fire...
...important don’t just think rainbows are important, they believe their models are so precise and complete that, despite their laughable incapacity to do clouds they can do mist so exactly...
...fridge, which you probably wouldn’t have anyway, and eating stale turnips all winter. If you’re lucky. Every time a celebrity emits vast clouds of carbon to preach against carbon, the...
...in screening out cosmic rays which, in turn, play a large role in the formation of clouds that potentially either trap or reflect incoming solar radiation. This is also known...
...a big effect on overall warming they should try to get it right to improve the accuracy of ECS modeling. And then there was more trouble. Clouds are tough to...
In the world of climate change it often seems that all is bleak beyond imagining. But then a ray of sunshine bursts through, in this case, the clouds on a...
...except that the aerosols in the choking exhaust of those ships (the stuff coming out the smoke stack) helped seed clouds as it trailed out across the main shipping routes;...
...it is, and since some kinds of clouds have a major role in reflecting heat back into space, if more solar output not only adds a bit of heat but...
...conversation with pseudo-science. For instance you supposedly quash “Clouds provide negative feedback” with “Evidence is building that net cloud feedback is likely positive and unlikely to be strongly negative.” Evidence,...
...the small change GHGs trigger changes in atmospheric water vapour and cloud cover in ways that cause an amplified “greenhouse effect”. But nobody really knows how water vapour and clouds...
...which included the abrupt resignation of both CEO and chair under clouds last November, was to… fold it into another equally risk-prone entity. A press release from something called the...
...CO2 concentration that has resulted from mankind’s burning of fossil fuels. References Carlaw, K.S., Harrison, R.G. and Kirkby, J. 2002. Cosmic rays, clouds, and climate. Science 298: 1732-1737. Frisia, S.,...
...being clouds no bigger than a man’s hand to crossfire hurricanes as the once-distant deadlines rushed toward us. So here we’re pleased to note that in a departure from the...
...or where clouds or aerosols are too thick to retrieve CO₂ data” so “OCO-2 data are assimilated into NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), a complex modeling and data assimilation...
...vegetation products vary in their spatial and temporal completeness as well as resolution and are sensitive to contamination from atmospheric composition, clouds, snow cover, and anisotropy, as well as orbital...
...we’re used to the high rollers of climate alarmism jetting into conferences “emitting carbon like great clouds of incense” to preach stale sermons then depart again in style having saved...
...Earth, the modelers’ computers that cannot even manage clouds are pretty much in that category. So it’s astounding that the modelers, instead of exhibiting a bit of humility, are now...
...and also stage a revolution or something. Curry can be forgiven for thinking he was serious: there really is something very wrong with the way the models mimic clouds or...
...why it was thought desirable, please let us know. And then there was that business of seeding clouds with dry ice in the mid-20th century, perhaps technically less risible but...
...interactions within ice and mixed phase clouds. [CDN Note: we have discussed the importance of aerosol-cooling errors in climate models here.] [In] the authors’ words, in addition to overestimating volcanic...
...who don’t have both feet firmly planted in the clouds, since it essentially says we couldn’t deliver all the electricity even if we could generate it which we can’t. But...
...you might expect. They plan to adapt to the massive changes, not prevent them by shouting at clouds. After that brief moment of sanity, things go bad again fast. And...
...“Australia prepares for bumper harvest as rain boosts NSW winter crops 300%”. Eh? Where’s this new normal of crop failure stalking the planet? Well, see, the clouds didn’t get the...
...shape-shifting landscapes, no less. Look out your window and you may see trees singing in birds, grass growing in the sky, clouds scudding past underfoot and rhetorical tornadoes everywhere. Including...
...well as resolution and are sensitive to contamination from atmospheric composition, clouds, snow cover, and anisotropy, as well as orbital changes and sensor degradations (--). Ground-based measurements suitable for calibration...
...thought”. But that was back in 2021, and the new claim was from May 2024. So is it now 36 times worse? Or are you all just screeching at clouds?...
...the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas...
...is paid by vested interests to emit clouds of confusion about the science or economics of climate action…. A sadder case is that of the grifters. They have found themselves...
...or her fire chief or water manager because it’s all to do with the sky and the wind and the clouds and the cars they drive in Texas and those...
...summer vacation while he blasts past overhead trailing clouds of CO2 rather than glory. Greta Thunberg’s effort to sail across the Atlantic rather than fly drew a lot of justified...
...in Canada. Temperatures are soaring to scorching levels, the rivers are drying up and the bees and the people are dying so we should emit vast clouds of carbon to...
...three decades and in Britain for more than seven, was due to CO2. None to methane, solar activity, changes in clouds, complex ocean currents or anything else. And how do...
...to net zero”, says the Pathways Alliance, with graphics of fluffy white clouds and consultant-speak a politician would envy about “several pathways to get to net zero” based on “technology...
...and GHGs whereas previously rain came from the sky or clouds or whatever. Which is why California used to have disastrous flooding regularly and now does or something. As late...
...to a spate of calm days when dense clouds descend over northern Europe. This weather pattern may occur two to 10 times a year, usually in the fall and winter,...
...says incoming solar energy averages 342 Watts/m2, with about a third bouncing off clouds or the ground leaving 235 to be absorbed. If there were no GHGs it would all...
...is releasing deadly clouds of CO2. “Although they're usually perceived as friendly helpers in the garden, elsewhere, they can be a surprisingly destructive force.” Once again, if worms can destroy...
...striking the Earth’s surface, for instance through whitening clouds to be more reflective, or setting up mirrors in space. But governments should not embark on any such activities, the panel...
...you'd better enjoy the view while you can, because soon it will be shrouded again in fog and clouds. Rain is a fact of life on the wet coast and...
...to cloud feedback – that is, the amplification of surface warming through changes in clouds.” In commenting on these findings Zhu et al. say their study “illustrates that the development...
...(positive) effect on warming because the net effect of clouds is to reflect solar radiation back into space before it can hit the ground and warm it. But CO2 didn’t...
...it: climate change. Warmer and moister air rises, forming supercell storm clouds that fuel tornados.” Boo climate change. And from Phys.org our ears are buffeted by “Hurricanes to hit Atlantic...
...Washington Post still advised “refreeze and wind risks into tonight” with large clouds of… never mind. Just snow particles. We didn’t know such conditions were ideal for mosquitoes but of...
...Illinois was the backstretch of its Belmont. If young clouds hung posters on their walls, they would be shots of the Tri-State supercell as it crossed the Mississippi. There may...
...cosmic rays are important in seeding clouds that then reflect heat, an active sun by screening them out contributes significantly to warming and a less active sun to cooling. Others...
...rich, well-connected people who’d spewed vast clouds of carbon to get there could do a victory dance on the prostrate “carbon sink” that, six years ago, they told us had...
...(aka “specific”) humidity should be rising. With more moisture in the air available to form clouds and rain, the hydrological cycle should also be intensifying, leading to more frequent and...
...Newsletter and blog have described two studies that show peculiar behaviour by clouds, not greenhouse gases, accounting for much of the increased absorption of short-wave solar radiation over the past...
...or whitening clouds over the ocean. The idea of ‘solar geoengineering’ alarms many climate scientists, activists and policymakers; but a number rightly see it as worth researching.” Other accounts are...
...nation from which my father kept a weather map pinned to his study wall because it showed no clouds that day, which he suspected was a unique occurrence. Now you...
...the first train to Gatwick. The forecast for the following week was awful – for storms, clouds, rain and ‘unseasonably cold’ weather. In other words, another typical August.” And while...
...And, like clouds, many parts of the Earth system are just too localized for climate models to pick up on.” So they’re so far out to lunch you might get...
...radiation and indeed solar wind are important, water vapour and clouds play a key role, oceans are huge and poorly understood and planet Earth is even more so. Accept that...
...discussions of the sun’s impact on temperature and that of clouds. And a stinging review of the computer models’ incapacity even to predict the past after we know what happened....
...CO2 does cause, feedback involving clouds, water vapor, wind patterns, ocean currents and so on, all of which are highly uncertain, hard to predict and feed back on one another....
...with clouds or that were of inferior quality, a total of 640 remote-sensing images were utilized to determine winter sea ice cover trends. As indicated by the figure below, Yan...
...is largely self-regulating through the action of clouds, his scheduled talk to the IMF was cancelled. Clauser was one of three winners in 2022 and also won a third of...