While greenhouse gases continue to cause temperatures to rise, a reduction in low-cloud cover over land serves as a natural brake: study.
While greenhouse gases continue to cause temperatures to rise, a reduction in low-cloud cover over land serves as a natural brake: study.
McGill University researchers have discovered that changes in clouds are slightly mitigating global warming. While greenhouse gases continue to cause temperatures to rise, a reduction in low-cloud cover over land has brought about a modest reduction of the amount of heat being trapped close to ground level.
"We started this research to observationally verify the increase of greenhouse effect of the Earth atmosphere," said Yi Huang, Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences who conceived a recent study published in Nature, "We indeed verified that, although to our surprise we also found an offsetting effect due to changes in clouds."
“Without these cloud changes, the surface would warm even faster,” said Lei Liu, graduate student in McGill's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and the first author of this study. "This work offers observational truth about how clouds affect warming, which can be used to improve climate models and guide environmental policies,” said Liu.
Read more at McGill University
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