GW, who did it? Just one more thing, the albedo and fake clouds

[polarbear]

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.

 

[Crick]

Where is the picture of it gone?

Where did you ever get the idea that scientists studying the Earth's albedo would be unaware of specular reflections off water? And what do you think is the quantitative difference between albedo from such reflections and albedo from clouds?

 

[Billy_Bob]

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.

You cant make accurate pressure changes for the model if you do not know what the albedo is doing. One of my pet peve's in regards to modeling and why it always fails to predict anything..

 

[Crick]

Where do you get the idea that they do not know what the albedo is doing? Do you have something that indicates it had never occurred to scientists that sunglint might look like cloud cover to a satellite?

And, where is the picture taken moments later that show this sun glint all gone away?