Role in The Climate System
-
Global cloud cover, averaged over the month of October, 2009. The outlines of the continents can often be traced through observations of clouds alone, with the sharpest outlines where very dry land is surrounded by ocean. NASA composite satellite image; larger image available here.
-
Satellite image based largely on observations from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005 of Earth's cloud cover.
Clouds play multiple critical roles in the climate system. In particular, being bright objects in the visible part of the solar spectrum, they efficiently reflect light to space and thus contribute to the cooling of the planet. A small increase in cloud cover could, in principle, balance the heating resulting from greenhouse gases (though this may have other implications as well).
See climate change for a more detailed discussion of these issues.
Read more about this topic: Cloud Cover
Famous quotes containing the words role in the, role, climate and/or system:
“Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“The climate of Ohio is perfect, considered as the home of an ideal republican people. Climate has much to do with national character.... A climate which permits labor out-of-doors every month in the year and which requires industry to secure comfort—to provide food, shelter, clothing, fuel, etc.—is the very climate which secures the highest civilization.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)