Changes in clouds The high impact that changes in clouds have on the global temperature is becoming more and more clear as more scientific studies appear. Nonetheless, many people keep their heads in the clouds and act as if nothing is changing.
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[ James Hasen et al. Earth’s albedo (reflectivity, in percent), seasonality removed ] |
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[ James Hansen: Inferred contributions to reduced Earth albedo ] |
For the average person, many effects of the temperature rise are also hard to notice, such as stronger ocean stratification and stronger wind.
One of the biggest causes why climate action is delayed, if not sabotaged, is the way climate change is or rather isn't reported in the media. In the video below, Paul Beckwith discusses the analysis by Hansen et al.
Further below, this post looks at two conditions that enable loss of lower clouds, i.e. high concentrations of greenhouse gases that result in higher temperatures and loss of sea ice.
High concentrations of greenhouse gases
Daily CO₂ concentrations haven't been below 430 parts per million (ppm) for 18 days in a row at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, as illustrated by the image below, which shows CO₂ for the last 31 days through May 15, 2025. The image also shows one recent hourly measurement exceeding 436 ppm.A daily CO₂ concentration of 431.25 ppm was recorded on May 10, 2025, at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, the highest daily average on record. One has to go back millions of years in time to find CO₂ concentrations this high, while the impact of high CO₂ concentrations back in history was lower due to lower solar output and the rate of change was also much slower, as also discussed in an earlier post.
High concentrations of greenhouse gases lead to high temperatures and the temperature rise itself comes with many feedbacks including more water vapor in the atmosphere, loss of sea ice and loss of lower clouds.
Loss of sea ice
One feedback of high concentrations of greenhouse gases is loss of sea ice. Polar amplification of the temperature rise is hitting the Arctic hard, but is also causing dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice. Global sea ice area has been very low for the past few years, as illustrated by the image below. This has caused a lot of sunlight that was previously reflected back into space, to instead get absorbed by the sea surface.
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[ click on images to enlarge ] |
The next image on the right illustrates how two of these feedbacks contribute to the accelerated Arctic temperature rise:
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[ Two out of numerous feedbacks ] |
Feedback #19: distortion of the Jet Stream as the temperature difference narrows between the Arctic and the Tropics, in turn causing further feedbacks to kick in stronger, such as hot air moving into the Arctic and cold air moving out, and more extreme weather events bringing heavier rain and more intense heatwaves, droughts and forest fires that cause black carbon to settle on the sea ice.
Arctic sea ice volume has been at a record low for more than a year, as illustrated by the image below.
Earlier studies include this 2015 study, this 2017 study and this 2022 study. The image below is from a 2021 study led by Goode that warns that warming oceans cause fewer bright clouds to reflect sunlight back into space, resulting in the Earth's surface absorbing more energy instead.
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[ the temperature in the atmosphere can keep rising, even in the absence of further emissions ] |
The clouds tipping point refers to abrupt disappearance of lower clouds, more specifically the stratocumulus decks. Stratus cloud decks cover about 20% of subtropical oceans and are prevalent in the eastern portions of those oceans—for example, off the coasts of California or Peru. The clouds cool and shade Earth as they reflect the sunlight that hits them back into space. Tapio Schneider et al. (2019) calculate that these clouds begin to break up when carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) levels rise above the tipping point of 1,200 ppm.
Disappearance of these clouds will make the temperatures go up strongly and rather abruptly. By the time CO₂e levels will have risen to this clouds tipping point of 1,200 ppm CO₂e, temperatures will already have gone up a lot in line with the warming from rising CO₂e levels. On top of this, the clouds feedback itself triggers an additional surface warming of some 8°C globally.
The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as also discussed at this group.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124002
https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/12/time-lag-could-still-lead-to-climate-tipping-point
• Study: Investigating climate tipping points under various emission reduction and carbon capture scenarios with a stochastic climate model - by Alexander Mendez et al. (2021)
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2021.0697
discussed on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10159745007124679
• NOAA - Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/monthly.html
https://seaice.visuals.earth
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-024-09838-8
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10161449934634679
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2015GL065627
• Interpretation of Factors Controlling Low Cloud Cover and Low Cloud Feedback Using a Unified Predictive Index - by Hideaki Kawai et al. (2017)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/22/jcli-d-16-0825.1.xml
• Estimated cloud-top entrainment index explains positive low-cloud-cover feedback - by Tsuyoshi Koshiro et al. (2022)
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2200635119
Warming oceans cause fewer bright clouds to reflect sunlight into space, admitting even more energy into earth's climate system
https://news.agu.org/press-release/earth-is-dimming-due-to-climate-change
• Study: Earth's Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine - by Philip Goode et al. (2021)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL094888
discussed on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10159604016414679
https://www.llnl.gov/news/paying-emissions-weve-already-released
• Study: Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect - by Chen Zhou et al. (2021)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00955-x
discussed on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10159009753799679
and at:
https://www.facebook.com/SamCarana/posts/10164808484750161
and in the post at:
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2021/01/2020-hottest-year-on-record.html
https://www.cliccs.uni-hamburg.de/about-cliccs/news/2022-news/2022-06-21-pm-marine-heat-waves.html
• Study: Recent marine heatwaves in the North Pacific warming pool can be attributed to rising atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases - by Armineh Barkhordarian et al. (2022)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00461-2
discussed on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/arcticnews/posts/10160085259739679
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/05/will-there-be-arctic-sea-ice-left-in-september-2023.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/10/transforming-society.html
• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html
• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html