Greenhouse Effect Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Greenhouse Effect, including details on global warming, greenhouse gases, causes, impact.

Smoke invigoration versus inhibition of clouds over the Amazon.

Koren I, Martins JV, Remer LA, Afargan H

Department of Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot 76100, Israel.

The effect of anthropogenic aerosols on clouds is one of the most important and least understood aspects of human-induced climate change. Small changes in the amount of cloud coverage can produce a climate forcing equivalent in magnitude and opposite in sign to that caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and changes in cloud height can shift the effect of clouds from cooling to warming. Focusing on the Amazon, we show a smooth transition between two opposing effects of aerosols on clouds: the microphysical and the radiative. We show how a feedback between the optical properties of aerosols and the cloud fraction can modify the aerosol forcing, changing the total radiative energy and redistributing it over the atmospheric column.

Published 15 August 2008 in Science, 321(5891): 946-9.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Greenhouse Effect Research Today. All Rights Reserved.