"We face a stark choice [between] radical, disruptive changes to our physical world or radical, disruptive changes to our political and economic systems to avoid those outcomes."
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Stratocumulus clouds cover about two-thirds of the Earth and help keep it cool by reflecting solar radiation back to space. Recent research has suggested that planetary warming correlates with greater cloud loss, stoking fears about a feedback loop that could spell disaster.
For this study, researchers at the California Institute of Technology used a supercomputer simulation to explore what could lead these low-lying, lumpy clouds to vanish completely. As science journalist Natalie Wolchover laid out in a lengthy piece for Quanta Magazine titled "A World Without Clouds":
The simulation revealed a tipping point: a level of warming at which stratocumulus clouds break up altogether. The disappearance occurs when the concentration of CO2 in the simulated atmosphere reaches 1,200 parts per million [ppm]—a level that fossil fuel burning could push us past in about a century, under "business-as-usual" emissions scenarios. In the simulation, when the tipping point is breached, Earth's temperature soars 8 degrees Celsius, in addition to the 4 degrees of warming or more caused by the CO2 directly...To imagine 12 degrees of warming, think of crocodiles swimming in the Arctic and of the scorched, mostly lifeless equatorial regions during the [Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM]. If carbon emissions aren't curbed quickly enough and the tipping point is breached, "that would be truly devastating climate change," said Caltech's Tapio Schneider, who performed the new simulation with Colleen Kaul and Kyle Pressel.
Quanta Magazine also broke down the study's key findings in a short video shared on social media:
BREAKING: A new simulation has revealed that global warming could cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear in as little as a century, which would add 8°C (14°F) of extra warming. https://t.co/MbNqDO89bQpic.twitter.com/doy03rTVBF— Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) February 25, 2019
The study elicited alarm from climate campaigners along with calls for the "radical, disruptive changes" to society's energy and economic systems that scientists and experts have repeatedly said are necessary to prevent climate catastrophe:
New study finds that business-as-usual global warming could produce...a world without clouds. Think about that a minutehttps://t.co/x68PBuhB0B— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) February 25, 2019
The future is radical. We face a stark choice btw radical, disruptive changes to our physical world or radical, disruptive changes to our political and economic systems to avoid those outcomes. The status quo is not one of the options on the table - get it yet "centrists"? https://t.co/M6VCXgAbfv— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) February 25, 2019
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has surged from about 280 ppm to more than 410 ppm today. Although concentrations will continue to rise as long as the international community maintains unsustainable activities that generate greenhouse gas emissions, some observers pointed out that atmospheric carbon hitting 1,200 ppm is far from a foregone conclusion.
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