The first thing a visitor to the Center for Clouds, Chemistry, and Climate notices is that there’s not a single picture of a cloud in sight. No photos of brooding thunderclouds, no cloud-category posters. The center (nicknamed C4) occupies a low wooden building on a hillside overlooking the ocean in La Jolla, California--a prime cloud-viewing site. Yet in the director’s office, Veerabhadran Ramanathan sits with his back to the window as decks of stratus clouds sweep in from the Pacific. The visual statement, he explains cheerfully, is unintended but telling. We’re not ready to deal with real clouds yet, he says. They’re just so complicated and ugly.
It’s not that a scientist like Ramanathan can’t appreciate the beautiful infinity of shapes and shades clouds can assume. But these qualities make clouds almost impossible to reduce to hard numbers.
Until recently there was little reason to do so. The only numbers ...
