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DisasterReducing air pollution has triggered something worse that scientists didn't predict - Less pollution leads to more sun hitting the ocean leading rising temperatures. Whoops!
Scientists have determined that “marine cloud reflectivity,” caused by cleaner air, has dropped by roughly 2.8 percent per decade across the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific.
Together, those regions span about one-seventh of the planet’s surface, making even small changes in brightness significant on a global scale.
In simple terms, fewer air particles produce dimmer clouds, which means less sunlight is reflected into space.
The shortwave energy that used to be reflected by clouds now reaches the sea surface. That, in turn, leads to ocean temperatures rising faster than ever before.
The finding helps explain why recent ocean warming has outpaced many forecasts. It points to a simple cause driven by complex physics.
Fading clouds, warming seas
The study was led by Dr. Knut von Salzen, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington (UW) whose work explores how tiny airborne particles and cloud microphysics shape Earth’s heat balance.
Clouds play a major cooling role by reflecting sunlight back into space – a property known as albedo – the fraction of light a surface reflects. Low clouds over cooler oceans handle much of this job.
But satellite data now reveal a subtle shift. The cloud radiative effect – the net change in energy caused by clouds – has weakened as marine clouds brightened less and covered less area.
The team zeroed in on the Northeast Pacific and North Atlantic, where ocean temperatures have risen rapidly over the past two decades.
Measurements from NASA’s CERES EBAF dataset show a steady drop in reflected shortwave radiation in these regions.
Together, these basins cover roughly 14 percent of Earth’s surface. Even a modest decline in cloud reflectivity can translate into a measurable boost in global warming.
Cleaner air, fewer cloud droplets
Airborne aerosols, tiny particles that seed cloud droplets, have declined as pollution controls tightened. With fewer particles, droplets grow larger, and clouds lose some brightness and tend to rain out sooner.
“We may be underestimating warming trends because this connection is stronger than we knew,” said Dr. von Salzen.
Two classic processes put numbers to that story. The Twomey effect, more particles make clouds brighter, weakens as air gets cleaner. The Albrecht effect, fewer particles can shorten cloud lifetime, also grows in a cleaner atmosphere.
Many Earth system models have not fully captured the observed changes. The new simulations improved accuracy by refining how particles activate into droplets and how droplet size influences drizzle and cloud cover.
Those improvements allowed the model to reproduce both the magnitude and the geographic footprint of the reflectivity drop. They also linked most of the change to aerosol reductions rather than ocean temperature shifts alone.
Clean Air Paradox
Global aerosol declines didn’t happen by chance. Independent analyses show sharp drops in sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in China during the 2010s, with similar pollution cuts seen across other nations.
Yet even as the air grew cleaner, heat-trapping gases continued to rise. Long-term measurements from NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory show a steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from 2003 to 2022 – adding to the planet’s overall heat gain.
That progress carries a trade-off. Lower particle pollution brings major health benefits but also reduces the number of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) – the microscopic seeds that water vapor condenses on to form droplets. With fewer particles, clouds become less reflective and dissipate more easily.
“We do not want to go back in time and take away the Clean Air Act,” said Sarah Doherty, senior research scientist at UW. “But we need to understand how cleaner air changes the planet’s energy balance.”
Risky climate shortcut
Satellite observations show a clear trend – fewer shiny droplets, larger droplet sizes, and faster drizzle. Together, those shifts make marine clouds less reflective and expose darker ocean surfaces to more sunlight.
The physics form a positive feedback loop: as oceans warm, low clouds thin, allowing even more shortwave radiation to reach the surface and amplify the initial heating.
In response, some researchers are exploring marine cloud brightening (MCB) – a proposed method to restore reflectivity by spraying fine sea-salt particles into the air to seed brighter clouds.
The concept aims to mimic nature by using salt rather than industrial pollution, but the science is still evolving.
NOAA reviews highlight key unknowns, including how predictable and safe such interventions would be if tested on a large scale.
Cloud clues for future warming
Short-term forecasts may soon need to factor in dimmer clouds in cleaner air. As aerosol emissions continue to fall, the study points to a persistent push toward less reflective marine clouds over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific.
That insight doesn’t change the urgency of cutting greenhouse gases. But it does refine climate projections by showing how cleaner air can unmask hidden warming once offset by pollution particles.
Scientists are now watching several key indicators. One is radiative forcing, the energy imbalance that drives warming or cooling. In these ocean basins, reduced aerosols have boosted the sunlight absorbed at the surface, adding regional heat pressure.
Another is the cloud radiative effect, which tracks how much energy clouds reflect or trap. Long-term satellite records help distinguish short-lived variations from lasting changes linked to cleaner air and shifting policy.
I fucking hate these faggots soooooo much. And what's worse is that the retards who followed them and claimed climate change are just going to follow them with no thought to how stupid this all sounds.
"eerm actually chuddie, we need to DIRECTLY pollute the clouds because we're doing such a good job preventing pollution!" Don't mind the literal SHIT IN THE STREET AND GARBAGE AND NEEDLES EVERYWHERE IN ALMOST EVERY MAJOR CITY NOW
How is this even news? That phenomenon was already witnessed in China when the Chinese goverment took steps to reduce pollution in citiers. And what do you know it was suddenly warmer because there was less smoke to block the sun.
So.
Pollution was bad - I can accept that premise.
Now not having pollution is bad.
Sorry - but it can't be both.
Here's a good idea that I'm willing to give science faggots for absolutely nothing - make your fucking minds up and keep your gob shut until you know what you're talking about.
So.
Pollution was bad - I can accept that premise.
Now not having pollution is bad.
Sorry - but it can't be both.
Here's a good idea that I'm willing to give science faggots for absolutely nothing - make your fucking minds up and keep your gob shut until you know what you're talking about.
I mean that's the entire climate grift:
In the 70s: Global Cooling!
In the 90s: Global Warming!
In the 2000s: Destruction of the ozone layer!
In the 2020s: Too much ozone!
It is blatantly obvious that despite the real impacts of human industry and pollution, the effects are vastly overstated and mass disinformation is disseminated by organizations that exist entirely on funding derived from doing such.
So.
Pollution was bad - I can accept that premise.
Now not having pollution is bad.
Sorry - but it can't be both.
Here's a good idea that I'm willing to give science faggots for absolutely nothing - make your fucking minds up and keep your gob shut until you know what you're talking about.
Here's a good idea that I'm willing to give science faggots for absolutely nothing - make your fucking minds up and keep your gob shut until you know what you're talking about.
The aspects of pollution isn't a closed system. We are heating up the oceans and the atmosphere through use of electricity, power plants, manufacturing plants, etc. The polluted air was briefly stopping the sun from contributing to our oceans warming, and then we lessened the impact of the polluted air, so the sun began affecting the ocean.
This doesn't mean "polluted air is good actually" you mouth breathing faggot. This means that we are currently fucking the planet up so badly that even when we try to fix it it just makes things worse. Thank those science faggots for the computer you're currently using to access the Internet, retard.
Or at least force them to figure their own shit out-- literally in the case of India. Imposing development on, or "uplifting", more primitive civilizations obviously doesn't work.
For fuck's sake, can't you give people (or nature) a win for once?
Eliminating most forms of air pollution is probably the biggest advance in public health in the developed world since antibiotics. Also helped a lot with getting rid of accumulated toxins in fish and birds.
As recently as 1980, they were all convinced there was a new Ice Age starting and we'd be under glaciers by 2000..... only to pull a U-turn and by 1993 were arguing we were going to bake alive from global warming.... by 2000...... why anyone believes any climatologist these days is beyond me.
For fuck's sake, can't you give people (or nature) a win for once?
Eliminating most forms of air pollution is probably the biggest advance in public health in the developed world since antibiotics. Also helped a lot with getting rid of accumulated toxins in fish and birds.
To quote P.J. O'Rourke - "Gas heating may have put a lot of 5 year old chimneysweeps out of work, but, it left them free to pursue other occupations. Like living beyond 16.... "
If you want me to stop throwing old car batteries into the ocean? The very least you have to do is not tell me "It's not enough!" when I take them to the recycling center instead.
"eerm actually chuddie, we need to DIRECTLY pollute the clouds because we're doing such a good job preventing pollution!" Don't mind the literal SHIT IN THE STREET AND GARBAGE AND NEEDLES EVERYWHERE IN ALMOST EVERY MAJOR CITY NOW
So.
Pollution was bad - I can accept that premise.
Now not having pollution is bad.
Sorry - but it can't be both.
Here's a good idea that I'm willing to give science faggots for absolutely nothing - make your fucking minds up and keep your gob shut until you know what you're talking about.
I have always been willing to believe that humans burning shit negatively affects the environment.
The chud crowd has been limp and dysfunctionally erectile in refuting this.
But the green crowd has been similarly incompetent in distilling their objections into anything resembling "this is the problem and this is how we solve it".
Sorry, I now think things are probably fine and drinking and smoking and living the good life are probably just fine. Bring me a skeleton of something I care about, preferably a cat with a fossilized tear, and maybe I'll start to care.
I had been too until I noticed that every volcano eruption (there are like 3 happening right now in Indonesia, Ecuador, and the Phillipines), major forest fire, or other smoke producing catastrophy is never ever mentioned in regard to global warming. It can only be the use of fossil fuels.
