New research shows that cloudy areas on the oceans are reflecting less sunlight to space than before, which aggravates the greenhouse effect and accelerates the Climate change.
The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, discovered that this darkening effect was occurring in several regions, including cloudy areas against the coast of California and Namibia, but also on the banks of Antarctica, where the recent significant melting of marine ice can also explain a greater absorption of sunlight by the oceans.
Professor Richard Allan, lead author of the study at Reading University, said: “Think on Earth as a mirror that reflects sunlight towards space. Over time, that mirror is getting dirty, particularly on our oceans, where the clouds are changing. This means that more solar energy is being absorbed instead of being reflected, which adds to the heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions. An important enigma to solve is whether the clouds are melting as temperatures increase as a mirror that is tarnished or if the decrease in air pollution that artificially illuminated the mirror as a cleaning aerosol is now disappearing. We need to find out what explanation is causing the clouds to become less brilliant to understand how much global warming will occur and how quickly. The remarkable global darkening helps to explain why we saw an unprecedented warming in 2023 ″.
Air pollution impacts
The researchers examined the warming that occurred between 2022 and 2023 and discovered that the surface of the ocean was heated even faster than it could be explained only by the increase in energy absorption. This led them to the conclusion that or the heat was concentrated in a less deep ocean layer than normal, or the additional heat stored in the deepest layers of the ocean was returning to the surface. The second explanation is aligned with the development of El Niño’s conditions in 2023, when the warm water of the ocean depths rose to the surface in the Pacific.
The study also found that East China is reflecting less sunlight than expected, probably due to successful efforts to reduce air pollution. This finding is significant because, although the reduction of air pollution improves public health, a cleaner air also allows more sunlight to pass through the atmosphere and clouds to reach the surface of the earth, which adds to heating due to the increase in greenhouse gases that catch heat.
The research suggests that these reductions in aerosol particles on China could be influencing climatic patterns beyond their borders, which could affect cloudiness and temperature patterns in the northern Pacific region through atmospheric wind patterns.