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

Barbara Goss Levi

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 PHYSICS TODAY, November 1994, page 36.) While struggling to represent clouds realistically in their models, atmospheric researchers have at least felt that they understood the basic physics of clouds. But now they are not so sure.

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