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from the overcast-with-a-chance-of-light-wood dept.
The pre-industrial atmosphere contained more particles, and so brighter clouds, than we previously thought. This is the latest finding of the CLOUD experiment, a collaboration between around 80 scientists at the CERN particle physics lab near Geneva. It changes our understanding of what was in the atmosphere before humans began adding pollution – and what it might be like again in the future.
Most cloud droplets need tiny airborne particles to act as "seeds" for their formation and growth. If a cloud has more of these seeds, and therefore more droplets, it will appear brighter and reflect away more sunlight from the Earth's surface. This in turn can cool the climate. Therefore understanding the number and size of particles in the atmosphere is vital to predicting not only how bright and reflective the planet's clouds are, but what global temperatures will be.
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The CLOUD experiment at CERN also recently discovered that gases emitted by trees can stick together to make new seeds for clouds in the atmosphere – without needing any help from other pollutants as was previously thought. Scientists had thought that the cloud seeds needed sulphuric acid (often mixed with other compounds) or iodine molecules to stick together to initiate the process.In our new follow-up study, published in PNAS, we worked with other CLOUD scientists to simulate this process in the atmosphere. Our work suggests that even today trees produce a large fraction of cloud seeds over the cleanest forested parts of the world.
More trees means more clouds, which means cooler Earth.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 12 2016, @12:59AM
There's also the fact that from a quick read *I* though it might indeed wreck those models...by making them understate the speed of onset of the process.
If trees are more effective at generating clouds than we thought, then deforestation will have stronger effects than we thought. And deforestation is continuing to happen all over the world.
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