Stratocumulus clouds spread out like puffy cotton balls in orderly rows above the ocean in the sub-tropics. The low-hovering clouds provide the planet shade and help keep Earth cool. But in a new study published this week, researchers say that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could wipe out these clouds. The discovery means that, under “business as usual” emissions scenarios, Earth could heat up 14 degrees Fahrenheit within a century.
“We are perturbing a complex system that we do not fully understand yet, and the system may well respond in surprising and nonlinear ways,” said Tapio Schneider, a climate scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who led the new research. His team’s results are “a warning shot” for the future,” he says.
Stratocumulus clouds act like a shade umbrella for the planet. The low clouds reflect some 30 to 60 percent of sunlight back into ...
