Cloud Feedback

It is possible that the earth's cloud distribution would change significantly as climate changes. Since clouds are both infrared absorbers and reflectors of sunshine, this would have an impact on the earth's radiation budget, altering the magnitude of the climate change. In spite of its potential importance, cloud feedback remains a major source of the uncertainty surrounding climate sensitivity. Global observation of clouds has only begun recently and is still rapidly improving, and most clouds cannot be resolved explicitly by global climate models. Difficulty in observing and simulating cloud properties present significant barriers to generating simple ideas for how cloud feedback might work.

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