SCIENCE: Climate Change Could Destroy Stratocumulus Clouds, Which Would Scorch the Planet
If humanity pumps enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of Earth’s most important types of cloud could go extinct. And if the stratocumulus clouds — those puffy, low rolls of vapor that blanket much of the planet at any given moment — disappear, Earth’s temperature could climb sharply and radically, to heights not predicted in current climate models. That’s the conclusion of a paper published today (Feb. 25) in the journal Nature Geoscience and described in detail by Natalie Wolchover for Quanta Magazine. As Wolchover explained, clouds have long been one of the great uncertainties of climate models. Clouds … Read more