As the ice in the clouds melts into droplets, they reflect more sunlight. But in the end there is no more ice left to melt.
Clouds that contain both water droplets and ice crystals, called mixed-phase clouds, have a slowing effect on global warming. This is because the clouds reflect more and more sunlight as ice turns to water. But what happens when all the ice crystals have turned into droplets?
Doctoral Research Fellow Jenny Bjordal and Professor Trude Storelvmo at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo have tried to figure it out. “What we have found, is exciting, but also scary”, Storelvmo says to Titan.uio.no. The results were published today in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
The clouds they have studied are in areas of the atmosphere with temperatures between 0 and 38 degrees below zero. “The area where we find most of them is across the Southern Ocean. They are also found elsewhere, but that is where most of them are”, Bjordal says.
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Image via University of Oslo
