They say "pictures don`t lie" and yet:
Sunglint on Lake Titicaca : Image of the Day
As far as the albedo effect is concerned this might as well be a large cloud bank.
But in another picture on the same day just a short time later it`s gone.
Which is just one more thing that illustrates how reality is not necessarily what we conclude from
casual observation. These climate models plug in a so called "average albedo" where cloud cover is a major contributing factor. As the models increase in sophistication they compile the overall outcome using square kilometer parcels. Many of these parcels use synthetic values, especially those where there are no ground stations reporting actual data.
Dollars to doughnuts there are a lot of parcels where that was way off the mark.
Sunglint on Lake Titicaca : Image of the Day
As far as the albedo effect is concerned this might as well be a large cloud bank.
But in another picture on the same day just a short time later it`s gone.
Which is just one more thing that illustrates how reality is not necessarily what we conclude from
casual observation. These climate models plug in a so called "average albedo" where cloud cover is a major contributing factor. As the models increase in sophistication they compile the overall outcome using square kilometer parcels. Many of these parcels use synthetic values, especially those where there are no ground stations reporting actual data.
Dollars to doughnuts there are a lot of parcels where that was way off the mark.