We hear a lot about how climate change will change the land, sea, and ice. But how will it affect clouds?
We hear a lot about how climate change will change the land, sea, and ice. But how will it affect clouds?
"Low clouds could dry up and shrink like the ice sheets," says Michael Pritchard, professor of Earth System science at UC Irvine. "Or they could thicken and become more reflective."
These two scenarios would result in very different future climates. And that, Pritchard says, is part of the problem.
"If you ask two different climate models what the future will be like when we add a lot more CO2, you get two very different answers. And the key reason for this is the way clouds are included in climate models."
Read more at University of Texas at Austin, Texas Advanced Computing Center
Image: Shallow clouds formed by fine-scale eddies as observed in nature. Researchers are using advanced computing to add higher-resolution cloud dynamics into global simulations. (Credit: NOAA)
