Do you know, besides hinting the day’s weather, changes in clouds can affect climate in the Earth’s coldest regions? Yes, NASA satellites are studying the clouds’ role in both regulating and understanding the prevailing climate.
To regulate the amount of radiation, the sun strikes the Earth’s surface and heat energy, the Earth reflects back into the atmosphere, the temperature, depth, size and shape of cloud droplets play a key role.
To study the climate of the Polar Regions, NASA innovatively picked up the clouds as the key tool for assessment. And to conduct this study, it launched a pair of satellites in 2006 – the CloudSat and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO).
According to the scientists, certain changes in the properties of cloud can eventually accelerate climate change. Deborah Vane, project manager and deputy principal investigator for the CloudSat mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. said,
The polar regions are very sensitive indicators of climate change. It’s been well reported now that the polar ice caps are undergoing net melting. There’s a complicated interaction between clouds and climate in Polar Regions that can contribute to temperature changes, and, in turn, speed the rate at which ice melts.
Orbiting the globe, they together use state-of-the-art instruments to not just reveal information about clouds in details, but also their effect on climate.
Hope this innovative experiment will soon unlock some of the particular mysteries of cold-season clouds.
Photo Credit: images.arm.gov