Cloud watching

I am sent this snippet of correspondence that refers intriguingly to continuing research into the effect of clouds on the climate. No, I won’t say who’s speaking.

Your reference to clouds led me to the work of Prof Roger Davies, who holds the Buckley-Glavish chair in Climate Physics at Auckland U.

He is part of a global group triangulating cloud data from a dedicated satellite, and seems to be developing a view that clouds provide a natural thermostat function (which Richard Lindzen has previously speculated about).

This comes from a 2008 article “Watching the Clouds” in the science faculty magazine:

Over the past eight years of data, there has been little change in the clouds over much of the Earth. However two regions stand out as exceptions. Near the equator, where the high clouds that determine the greenhouse effect are especially numerous, the cloud cover has dropped in height, suggesting a lowering of their greenhouse effect, potentially to offset global warming.

In addition, the reflectivity of the Arctic has changed. In northern summer 2006, the reflectivity of the Arctic decreased significantly, due to less cloud cover and less ice in the area, both of which reflect sunlight. However, from the ground, only a moderate decrease in ice was seen compared to its normal summer melt. The following year, there was a significantly higher ice melt than predicted, despite the fact that satellite pictures were brighter than average, and much brighter than the previous summer, due to increased cloud.

But was the 2007 melt due to the darkness of 2006? Were the clouds of 2007 compensating for the low ice reflectivity to keep a balance? Right now, we don’t know enough to say.

Interesting, but Google shows up nothing recent. He generally seems to keep his head down.

/end snippet

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Global warming spreads by word of morph

Here in New Zealand, the NZ Climate Science Coalition has battled for several years to understand the national temperature record and get the data released that lies behind it. Now we battle to correct it.
 
Because NIWA, in “reconstructing” the record, manages miraculously to lower past temperatures and increase recent ones to create a spurious warming that overstates the actual national warming over the last hundred years by 168%!
 
We’ve told NIWA about it and we’ve sent them our report that proves it, but they refuse to acknowledge our finding, much less explain themselves. It is a national disgrace which our newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television channels strangely refuse to investigate.
 
The warming is truly man-made, for it hasn’t happened in the real world, it has been created only by the adjustments.
 
Now, from C3 Headlines, we learn that an even more invidious process has been going on in the United States. Continue Reading →

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