Clouds Cast a Shadow of Doubt on Models of Earth’s Climate
MAY 01, 1995
According to three recent experiments, clouds appear to be absorbing more of the incoming solar radiation than they should—at least if our current understanding of cloud physics is correct. Researchers plan additional experiments, capable of measuring the wavelengths at which the absorption occurs, to obtain more clues about the source of the discrepancy.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2808012
Clouds have always bedeviled those trying to model Earth’s climate, because they are such complex systems, involving parameters whose size and time scales range over many orders of magnitudes. (See the article by Jeffrey Kiehl in
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© 1995 American Institute of Physics
