New research tracking the albedo of our planet—its ability to reflect sunlight—has revealed that a complex interplay of periodical weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean affects our overall cloud cover, especially in the sky west of the Americas. This in turn has a large impact on the amount of light absorbed rather than reflected from the Earth.
“The reflectivity of the Earth is mainly a story of clouds,” says Philip Goode, a physics professor at the Big Bear Solar Observatory run by the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
