Anyone know what the cloud cover was before 1750?

Wyatt earp

Diamond Member
Apr 21, 2012
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I never thought of that one, what was the earthy cloud cover before the industrial revolution, more, less or the same?

A interesting article....


These scientists made their own clouds, and what they found could require us to rethink how fast the earth is warming


These_scientists_made_their_own-dec3e93f3417be856f1bc48adbdec690
(Wikimedia Commons)
A new experiment looking at clouds is about to change the way we think about climate change.

For decades, scientists have thought that the tiny particles that form clouds — and play a big role in keeping the planet cool — were produced as a counterintuitive side effect of pollution.


So, while it was understood that we were putting loads of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere and heating things up, it was also thought that at least some of those particles were getting trapped inside clouds and helping to keep that warming from being even more catastrophic.

But a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, which looked more closely at these tiny particles, found that they can be produced naturally. This will help us understand just how cloudy the world actually was before we started polluting it, which is key to figuring out the rate at which our planet is heating up.

A cloud conundrum
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes aerosols as the single biggest source of uncertainty in human-driven climate change. Part of the problem is that we have no way of measuring just how cloudy the planet was in the preindustrial era.

Thanks to this uncertainty, and despite our precise measurements of the effects of human-induced greenhouse warming on climate, the estimates for projected climate change have entertained a wide range of numbers for projected warming.

The models predict that if carbon dioxide doubles over the next century, then the planet will warm anywhere from 2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit — a critical difference that should inform the way we prepare for the future.

So, what's the deal with aerosols? Turns out that there are two sources of the particles:

  1. Direct aerosol particles: produced by dust, sea-salt spray, or the burning of biomass
  2. Secondary aerosol particles:formed when gas is converted into a particle — these are the type the scientists of the new study are interested in
Unlike what happens with direct aerosol particles, gas to particle conversion occurs everywhere. As a result, more than half of all the cloud seeds in the atmosphere are secondary aerosol particles!

This is where it gets tricky. Up until now, scientists believed that sulfuric acid, which is mainly produced from fossil-fuel emissions — cars, factories, etc. — were necessary for the formation of secondary aerosols. But in this new study, a group of scientists shows that Earth can actually produce these particles without any help from humans.

Instead, it gets made from a mix of tree vapors and highly energetic particles that bombard our atmosphere from outer space called cosmic rays.

We found that nature produces particles without pollution. That is going to require a rethink of how human activities have increased aerosols in clouds.
"We found that nature produces particles without pollution," Jasper Kirkby, a European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physicist and the originator and spokesman of the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment, told Business Insider. "That is going to require a rethink of how human activities have increased aerosols in clouds."




.
 
I never thought of that one, what was the earthy cloud cover before the industrial revolution, more, less or the same?

A interesting article....


These scientists made their own clouds, and what they found could require us to rethink how fast the earth is warming


These_scientists_made_their_own-dec3e93f3417be856f1bc48adbdec690
(Wikimedia Commons)
A new experiment looking at clouds is about to change the way we think about climate change.

For decades, scientists have thought that the tiny particles that form clouds — and play a big role in keeping the planet cool — were produced as a counterintuitive side effect of pollution.


So, while it was understood that we were putting loads of planet-warming gases into the atmosphere and heating things up, it was also thought that at least some of those particles were getting trapped inside clouds and helping to keep that warming from being even more catastrophic.

But a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, which looked more closely at these tiny particles, found that they can be produced naturally. This will help us understand just how cloudy the world actually was before we started polluting it, which is key to figuring out the rate at which our planet is heating up.

A cloud conundrum
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes aerosols as the single biggest source of uncertainty in human-driven climate change. Part of the problem is that we have no way of measuring just how cloudy the planet was in the preindustrial era.

Thanks to this uncertainty, and despite our precise measurements of the effects of human-induced greenhouse warming on climate, the estimates for projected climate change have entertained a wide range of numbers for projected warming.

The models predict that if carbon dioxide doubles over the next century, then the planet will warm anywhere from 2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit — a critical difference that should inform the way we prepare for the future.

So, what's the deal with aerosols? Turns out that there are two sources of the particles:

  1. Direct aerosol particles: produced by dust, sea-salt spray, or the burning of biomass
  2. Secondary aerosol particles:formed when gas is converted into a particle — these are the type the scientists of the new study are interested in
Unlike what happens with direct aerosol particles, gas to particle conversion occurs everywhere. As a result, more than half of all the cloud seeds in the atmosphere are secondary aerosol particles!

This is where it gets tricky. Up until now, scientists believed that sulfuric acid, which is mainly produced from fossil-fuel emissions — cars, factories, etc. — were necessary for the formation of secondary aerosols. But in this new study, a group of scientists shows that Earth can actually produce these particles without any help from humans.

Instead, it gets made from a mix of tree vapors and highly energetic particles that bombard our atmosphere from outer space called cosmic rays.

We found that nature produces particles without pollution. That is going to require a rethink of how human activities have increased aerosols in clouds.
"We found that nature produces particles without pollution," Jasper Kirkby, a European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physicist and the originator and spokesman of the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment, told Business Insider. "That is going to require a rethink of how human activities have increased aerosols in clouds."




.
Those who claim to know are extraordinarily stupid people.

Combined, they are ALL dumber than a box of rocks.
 

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