Clouds and temperature

[Leitwolf]

Hello to the community

I wanted to find out how clouds affect surface temperature. Regrettably I could not find a lot of usefull information on this issue, except for sources I do not fully trust.

So I downloaded some raw data from the NOAA that include both cloud condition (although only up to 12.000ft) and temperature, those were about 100 Mio records. Then I did some programming in good old C to extract the data I was looking for.

What I found, after some proper filtering (location, season, day time), is a distinct pattern in the correlation between cloudiness and temperature. Of the 5 basic cloud conditions (CLR, FEW, SCT, BKN, OVC), CLR and OVC are about equally cold, while the intermediate scenarios are warmer. In fact the chart describes a nice little curve.

That far there is no specific trend, as the curve is largely symmetric. Of course this result is a bit odd, since clouds are expected to cool Earth in the context of climatology. If that was true we should see some effect on the mirco level if you will, and have lower temperatures with clouds.

Now here is the real problem:

On the one side I want to understand why there is this curvy shape and on the other side I have yet to allow for another bias which is rain. Rain sharply reduces surface temperatures and it is of course strongly correlated to cloudiness. In fact you get a logarithmic shaped curve if you plot the amount of rain against those 5 cloud conditions (there is some rain reported with CLR skies though, which is due to the 12.000ft reporting ceiling).

So since rain has an increasing chilling effect with stronger cloudiness, this is a perfect explanation for the described curve. But then this bias by rain masks a correlation which seems otherwise quite linear in nature: the more clouds, the warmer.

But if that is so, and clouds actually warm the surface, the whole GHE (due to GHGs) is shattered.

 

 

 

 

[psv88]

On 7/10/2019 at 1:58 PM, Leitwolf said:

Hello to the community

I wanted to find out how clouds affect surface temperature. Regrettably I could not find a lot of usefull information on this issue, except for sources I do not fully trust.

So I downloaded some raw data from the NOAA that include both cloud condition (although only up to 12.000ft) and temperature, those were about 100 Mio records. Then I did some programming in good old C to extract the data I was looking for.

What I found, after some proper filtering (location, season, day time), is a distinct pattern in the correlation between cloudiness and temperature. Of the 5 basic cloud conditions (CLR, FEW, SCT, BKN, OVC), CLR and OVC are about equally cold, while the intermediate scenarios are warmer. In fact the chart describes a nice little curve.

That far there is no specific trend, as the curve is largely symmetric. Of course this result is a bit odd, since clouds are expected to cool Earth in the context of climatology. If that was true we should see some effect on the mirco level if you will, and have lower temperatures with clouds.

Now here is the real problem:

On the one side I want to understand why there is this curvy shape and on the other side I have yet to allow for another bias which is rain. Rain sharply reduces surface temperatures and it is of course strongly correlated to cloudiness. In fact you get a logarithmic shaped curve if you plot the amount of rain against those 5 cloud conditions (there is some rain reported with CLR skies though, which is due to the 12.000ft reporting ceiling).

So since rain has an increasing chilling effect with stronger cloudiness, this is a perfect explanation for the described curve. But then this bias by rain masks a correlation which seems otherwise quite linear in nature: the more clouds, the warmer.

But if that is so, and clouds actually warm the surface, the whole GHE (due to GHGs) is shattered.

 

 

 

 

You nailed it. Man made global warming has been debunked because the earth, while recording record temps year after year, is covered in clouds, which should be warming it. Solid logic.