Paradoxically, one of the great difficulties of meteorology lies in studying its most visible manifestations: the clouds. Anyone can see them and the satellites record their short-term behavior in detail, but things get complicated when it comes to knowing how cloud masses evolve over long periods of time .
Research published in the journal Nature , based on a meticulous analysis of data collected by satellites from 1983 to 2009 , indicates that the trend of their distribution is consistent with the predictions made by the main computational weather models: clouds migrate towards the poles. This means that global warming is expanding aridity beyond the subtropics and storms are moving to the polar caps , probably as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.
This work also shows that the upper cloud layers of the atmosphere are located at a higher altitude than 30 years ago , a consequence that had also been predicted by climatologists. In short, that global warming is changing global cloud cover as expected.
To reach these conclusions, scientists have had to carry out extensive review work, discarding the data taken by satellite sensors that had deteriorated over time. The records of water vapor in suspension over the oceans and the reflectivity of the Earth, that is, the sunlight that bounces off the surface of our planet and returns to space, were also evaluated, both indicators of a greater or lesser presence of clouds. .
