“Climate science is baffled by clouds. Not enough is understood yet about clouds to state whether they have a cooling or warming effect on the Earth. A change in cloud cover by 1% can produce changes as great as the most exaggerated claims that are meant to derive from humans adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Climate models do not do clouds well and don’t consider fog and mist which have the same effect as clouds,” reports Ian Plimer. (1)
The first reliable analysis of cloud behavior over the past decades suggests that clouds are strongly amplifying global warming. If that’s true, then almost all climate models have got it wrong. Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the research team established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet. (2)
Even man-made clouds, the contrails from a jet plane, for example, have a cooling effect. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, all commercial flights in the US were grounded for three days. Using data from more than four thousand weather stations across the country, scientists found that the sudden absence of contrails accounted for a subsequent rise in ground temperature of nearly 2F, or 1.1C. (3)
Analyzing a limited set of data, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT hypothesized that cirrus clouds and associated moisture work in opposition to surface temperature changes. The data seem to indicate that when the Earth’s surface warms, clouds open up to allow heat to escape. A cooling surface, in turn, causes clouds to close and trap heat. Recent research at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) supports the validity of this effect. As opposed to the hypothesized positive feedback of the climate models, the UAH data show a strong negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease, allowing infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space. (4)
Dust
“Observations and models show that northern tropical Atlantic surface temperatures are sensitive to dust blowing up form North Africa. Regional changes in stratospheric volcanic and tropospheric mineral aerosols (i.e., dust) are responsible for 69% of the upward trend in temperatures over the last 30 years. Once again, a new factor has been discovered that is not accounted for in general circulation models (GCM) used to predict global warming