The worst - case scenario for climate change just got incomprehensibly bad . Stratocumulus clouds break up if C dioxide levels get high enough . Since these cloud cool the satellite by reflect light back to space , interfering with them would magnify global warming beyond anything in earnest turn over up to this point . Although it is unlikely humans will free enough carbon paper dioxide to spark this catastrophe , we ’re heading for something closer than anyone should experience comfortable about .
Stratocumuli are usually non - rain - bear clouds far-flung in the tropics and subtropics , cover almost 20 percent of the ocean there at any one time . They ’re powerful reflector , so if the dowry of the Earth they cover up were to pass significantly , global temperatures would leap .
Indeed , if we fall back the world ’s stratocumulus clouds entirely the planet as a whole would warm up by 8ºC ( 14ºF),Professor Tapio Schneiderof the California Institute of Technology reports inNature Geoscience . Temperatures in subtropic realm would get up by an norm of 10ºC ( 18ºF ) , but it ’s strong to imagine any human civilization left to show it precisely . This rising , by the way , is on top of , rather than including , the temperature increment already forebode by climate mannequin .
Schneider has modeled the effect of high carbon paper dioxide level on stratocumulus clouds . He found that above atmospherical concentrations of 1,200 parts per million ( ppm ) , unstableness appears within the cloud and the atmosphere above becomes more unintelligible to long wavelength radiation . These break the existing enormous banks of stratocumulus clouds into dispel cumulation puffballs that excogitate less than 10 percent as much light .
Moreover , if such a thing were to occur , it would be almost impossible to reverse . regenerate stratocumulus bank requires carbon copy dioxide levels below today ’s levels . At intermediary CO2concentrations , the exist place is maintain , whatever it may be .
According to Schneider , while the consequences are dramatic , the gist is only detectable when atmospheric models operate at very fine scales , which is why previous global climate models have drop it . This may explain why certain past eras , such as the early Eocene 50 million year ago , were astonishingly hot , given what else we know about conditions at the sentence .
Before you sell all your temporal wealthiness and link up an revelatory destruction cult , it ’s of import to note that we ’re a long way from 1,200 ppm , and will credibly never get there . Before the Industrial Revolution , CO2levels were around 270 ppm . They ’re now at 410 ppm . The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects spirit level to be at600 - 1,000 ppmby the class 2100 if we reject to act on climate change , or sub 400 ppm if we get serious .
On the other hand , one has to consider the possibility that Schneider ’s estimates are really too optimistic , and stratocumulus flop could occur at a somewhat lower level . Is that a peril we really want to take ?
