Quote of the Week - Clouds already are shifting their distributions across the Earth

Every week, there are many new scientific studies published relating to climate change.  It is a big field, a multidisciplinary field and a hot field.

But according to leading climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan — credited with discovering that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, are actually a greenhouse gas, among other major findings — a new study this week showing that clouds already are shifting their distributions across the Earth, and in a way predicted by climate change models, stands out.  And not in a good way.

The study was led by Ramanathan’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography colleague Joel Norris, though Ramanathan said he was not involved in the work and didn’t know about it until shortly before publication.  But Ramanathan said that the study basically confirms that there’s nothing to prevent the world from reaching the high levels of warming that have long been feared — except for our own swift policy actions, that is.

“My reaction was, my goodness,” Ramanathan said.  “Maybe the 4 to 5 degree warming, certainly we were all wishing there was some certainty that would make it go away.  So I consider the findings of this paper, the data shows major reorganization of the cloud system.”

This matters because clouds are fundamental regulators of how much solar radiation makes it to the Earth’s surface (rather than being reflected back to space by white cloud tops), and how much infrared or “longwave” radiation escapes back to space once again.

‘The most singular of all the things that we have found': Clouds study alarms scientists by Chris Monney, Energy & Environment, Washington Post, July 14, 2016