This article discusses a study that shows that cloud-free skies will emerge from climate change, leading to disastrous ‘feedback loop’.
When global warming really gets rolling, it will mean fewer clouds in the sky — until, finally, there are no clouds at all anymore.
The result of a cloudless Earth: a blisteringly hot hellscape that will make the planet’s remaining species wish they were dead. See a brief epoch from 55 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
Here’s how the scientists put it in the journal Nature Geoscience:
“In the simulations, stratocumulus decks become unstable and break up into scattered clouds when CO2 levels rise above 1,200 ppm. In addition to the warming from rising CO2 levels, this instability triggers a surface warming of about 8 K globally and 10 K in the subtropics. Once the stratocumulus decks have broken up, they only re-form once CO2 concentrations drop substantially below the level at which the instability first occurred.”