| | |
Summary: Changes in Tropical Clouds and
Radiation
Two potentially important papers by
Wielicki et al. (1) and Chen et al. (2) dealt
with aspects of how clouds and radiation vary
and change, and whether climate models sim-
ulate the changes correctly. There is ample
prior evidence suggesting that models have
difficulties in correctly simulating clouds,
and clouds are regarded as the biggest source
of uncertainty in reports by the Intergovern-
mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (3).
However, an alternative interpretation of the
disagreements shown between observations
and models is that the analyses of the obser-
vations may be flawed.
Making observations from space that are
stable over time is difficult. Most satellites last
only a few years before they are replaced, orbits
of satellites decay, and heating extremes are
|
