Earth’s cloud cover is shrinking at a rapid pace, intensifying global warming and contributing to record-breaking temperatures worldwide, an international study involving Australian researchers has revealed.

The study, based on 24 years of satellite data, found that 1.5 to 3 percent of the world’s storm cloud zones have shrunk each decade, a trend driven by climate change as shifting winds and expanding tropics push storm systems toward the poles, said a latest news release on the website of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Center of Excellence for 21st Century Weather at Monash University in Melbourne.

With fewer clouds to reflect sunlight back into space, more solar energy is absorbed by the Earth, amplifying the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study led by the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration in collaboration with Australian researchers and published in Geophysical Research Letters.

This reduction in cloud cover is now seen as the main reason Earth is absorbing more solar energy, with new research confirming these changes are already driving significant recent warming, said Christian Jakob, the study’s co-author and director of the ARC Center.

“It’s an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the extraordinary recent warming we observed, and a wake-up call for urgent climate action,” Jakob said, adding accurately predicting cloud formation and sunlight reflection is essential for anticipating the speed and scale of future warming.

“It’s not just long-term averages that matter, but how the day-to-day and season-to-season conditions we all rely on are changing,” he said.

Source: Xinhua

- Agencies