Clouds

“Have you ever thought about clouds?”

A cloud is a formation of watermolecules around a condensation nucleus. Condensation nuclei can either be a kind of air pollution or ionized natural molecules. As a cloud develops around its nucleus it grows till it is so big that we are able to see them in the sky.

Clouds are awesome. The most obvious awesome thing is that clouds provide shadows on way-too-hot summer days. But they can do a lot more. They help us – at least a little bit – to fight the climate change. The bright white clouds reflect solar radiation and prevent it from hitting the earth. This is called the albedo-effect. But they also warm us in cold winter days. Have you ever wondered why cloudless winterdays are much colder then cloudy days? The infrared radiation sent out by earth is also reflected back – thats what we call Greenhouse effect. But at the moment we are well protected by the clouds. They reduce the heating of our planet.

But here is the bad thing about clouds interacting with the global climate change: There is scientific evidence [1] that the climate change is making our cloudy shield less effective. The clouds move to the poles. In doing that they leave the equator less protected from solar radiation, where it is needed the most. They can move higher into the athmosphere as well, which makes them reflect less solar radiation to the outside and reflect more infrared-radiation coming from the earth back to it and with this they even accelerate climate change.

But the real problem is not the clouds moving slowly in the sky. The problem is the Greenhouse-effect, that has to be stopped. Immediately we have to worry about it. And stop it. Stop the clouds from getting our rivals instead of being our friends and helpers. The climate doesn’t have to change. We have to change.

Sources

[1] https://www.spektrum.de/news/das-wolkenparadoxon/1560204