Clouds come in myriad shapes, sizes and types, which control their effects on climate. New research led by the University of Washington shows that the splintering of frozen liquid droplets to form ice shards inside Southern Ocean clouds dramatically affects the clouds’ ability to reflect sunlight back to space.
The paper, published in AGU Advances, shows that including this ice-splintering process improves the ability of high-resolution global models to simulate clouds over the Southern Ocean — and thus the models’ ability to simulate Earth’s climate. The research was funded by the US. National Science Foundation
“There’s much of interest in this paper, not only the surprising effect of ice splintering on clouds but the combination of high-res modeling with real-world data from satellites and an airplane,” said Eric DeWeaver, a program director in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences “It will be interesting to see what more happens with this toolkit.”
Thanks and credit NSF (US. National Science Foundation)
Read more at: Ice shards in Antarctic clouds let more solar energy reach Earth’s surface | NSF – National Science Foundation