After the Clouds

[Image: A cloudless day in the Alabama Hills of California; photo by BLDGBLOG].

The Earth could lose all its clouds according to a feasible runaway greenhouse scenario, modeled by scientists at Caltech.

“Clouds currently cover about two-thirds of the planet at any moment,” Natalie Wolchover writes for Quanta. “But computer simulations of clouds have begun to suggest that as the Earth warms, clouds become scarcer. With fewer white surfaces reflecting sunlight back to space, the Earth gets even warmer, leading to more cloud loss. This feedback loop causes warming to spiral out of control.”

Or, she warns, as if channeling J. G. Ballard’s novel The Drowned World, “think of crocodiles swimming in the Arctic.”

3 thoughts on “After the Clouds”

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