'We're changing the clouds.' An unforeseen test of geoengineering is fueling record ocean warmth

[NickB79]

But researchers are now waking up to another factor, one that could be filed under the category of unintended consequences: disappearing clouds known as ship tracks. Regulations imposed in 2020 by the United Nations’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) have cut ships’ sulfur pollution by more than 80% and improved air quality worldwide. The reduction has also lessened the effect of sulfate particles in seeding and brightening the distinctive low-lying, reflective clouds that follow in the wake of ships and help cool the planet. The 2020 IMO rule “is a big natural experiment,” says Duncan Watson-Parris, an atmospheric physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We’re changing the clouds.”

By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster, several new studies have found. That trend is magnified in the Atlantic, where maritime traffic is particularly dense. In the shipping corridors, the increased light represents a 50% boost to the warming effect of human carbon emissions. It’s as if the world suddenly lost the cooling effect from a fairly large volcanic eruption each year, says Michael Diamond, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State University.

It appears that sulfur pollution was masking how potent CO2 actually is as a greenhouse gas.

[Drum]

1. Is there a source this comes from?

…sorry—I meant do you have a link?

[hunter]

8. Link here:

https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-clouds-unforeseen-test-geoengineering-fueling-record-ocean-warmth

[NickB79]

11. Thank you!

Sorry, my bad. That's what happens when you post as you're dozing off.

[RockRaven]

2. More like "we *stopped* changing the clouds"

[Evergreen Scholar]

3. I found some links

A possible source of the text above:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/08/02/232204/pollution-cuts-have-diminished-ship-track-clouds-adding-to-global-warming

The study it seems to be based on:
https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-813/

[Think. Again.]

4. Why does this article...

...seem to attempting to say that human activity is the natural positive default and that nature itself is somehow wrong without the pollution we cause?

[Random Boomer]

5. Exactly my thought

This wording was especially problematic:

By dramatically reducing the number of ship tracks, the planet has warmed up faster

Ship tracks masked the full heat expression created by the greenhouse gases we have poured into our atmosphere.

[Progressive dog]

9. Good question?

Just keep pumping that pollution out and all will be well. I wonder which fossil fuel companies are behind this spin.

[Think. Again.]

10. Bingo.

[NickB79]

12. Is renowned climatologist Michael Mann on the payroll too?

Because he asked the same question, and predicted this effect, 3 yr ago.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062020/sulfate-emissions-coronavirus-arctic-heatwaves/

“Ultimately we need to eliminate sulfur pollution and sulfate aerosols, which cause lots of other problems too, such as acid rain,” says Michael Mann, a renowned climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “But it is a ‘Faustian bargain’ in the sense that [reductions in aerosols] unmasks some of the global warming that had been hidden for decades by the sulfate aerosol pollution.”

[Progressive dog]

14. He worded his statement

to make it plain that the sulfate causes other problems.

[sue4e3]

6. we need

to put them back . I understand that pollution in general is not good but cooking is worse. We better get very comfortable with the lesser evils if we want to survive

[Donkees]

7. Photo: Ship Tracks

Crisscrossing clouds known as ship tracks can be seen off the coast of Spain in this 2003 satellite image. With the phasing out of high-sulfur ship fuel, these reflective clouds have become scarcer, leading to ocean warming.ACQUES DESCLOITRES/MODIS LAND RAPID RESPONSE TEAM; MARK GRAY/MODIS


https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-clouds-unforeseen-test-geoengineering-fueling-record-ocean-warmth

In Nature last year, they reported that these “invisible” ship tracks not only enhanced low lying marine clouds, as usual, but also markedly increased the volume of puffy cumulus clouds higher in the atmosphere, previously thought to be immune to the influence of ship pollution. They concluded that air pollution could be causing clouds to cool the climate at roughly double the previously projected strength.

However, when the team then looked at the effect of the IMO rules on these invisible tracks, they received a shock: The decline in pollution didn’t make the cumulus clouds any less puffy, they report in a new preprint in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP). It suggests these clouds have a saturation point, after which added pollution does little to increase their depth, Watson-Parris says. “We removed 80% of the aerosols, but that’s still not taking us close to the preindustrial state.”

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. Actually, this has been understood for half a century

You may have heard “skeptics” cite that in the 70’s everybody was worried about “Global Cooling.” Well, that isn’t really true, but it was pointed out that sulphur pollution did have the effect of blocking the sun’s rays, leading to cooling.

In 2001, George W. Bush, explained:

https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 11, 2001

President Bush Discusses Global Climate Change

11:10 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I've just met with senior members of my administration who are working to develop an effective and science-based approach to addressing the important issues of global climate change.

…

For example, our useful efforts to reduce sulfur emissions may have actually increased warming, because sulfate particles reflect sunlight, bouncing it back into space. And, finally, no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.

…