Talk:Cloud feedback

Additional reference(s) to add

I agree with a general sense that this page could be improved. I have made a small start. Until I come back to it, I'm noting here that it would be useful to include some information from the Sherwood et al. (2020) paper as this was the most recent review that I'm aware of, and is not entirely superseded by the IPCC report- it is complementary. There have been developments since the review (which somebody has helpfully begun to add to the page), but I don't the Sherwood review is redundant yet. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019RG000678 — Preceding unsigned comment added by DecFinney (talk • contribs) 10:48, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

I've now referenced this in the cloud types section of the article DecFinney (talk) 11:02, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

Cloud Feedback

In the article it claims "clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect". Is there a reliable source for this? Intuitively one must question the statement's validity, aren't cloudy days generally cooler than sunny ones?--Damorbel (talk) 19:08, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Aren't cloudy nights generally warmer than clear ones? -Atmoz (talk) 19:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Any intro textbook will do -- Ahrens, Aguado and Burt, etc. Your statement mixes up short- and long-wave radiation. A better example is that cloudy nights don't cool off as much as clear ones. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 19:42, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The point is that the main heat input is during the day, is an invalid argument to introduce clear nightime, you should only compare like with like. You are surely aware that cloudy nights are generally colder than cloudy days, even if cloudy nights are not so cold as clear ones. I do not have links to your authors, can you provide a reliable source please?--Damorbel (talk) 20:23, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's cited in the text of the article. It's in Aguado and Burt. It's in Ahrens. And if books aren't good enough for you, it's also in Ramanathan (1987) (among many other papers). -Atmoz (talk) 21:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it is a misunderstanding but I wasn't referring to the radiation budget as in your link Ramanathan (1987). You do not need a satellite to observe the effect I am referring to, it is simple common experience and discussion of it should have a place in the article, don't you think? --Damorbel (talk) 21:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

That article addresses your initial post. It is a reliable source that says that "clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect". As is the paper cited in the article, as are the two books linked above. If you have a point, make it quickly or I'll assume you're just trolling again. -Atmoz (talk) 21:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

You are persistant! The point is that the presence of cloud reduces the temperature at the surface which is common experience and fact. If you confuse this fact with trolling which I understand is a term of abuse, then may I ask just what contribution you are making? You do not seem to understand that the effect I am talking about is local to the surface under clouds, Ramanathan does not discuss that at all. --Damorbel (talk) 07:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes he does. Did you read the paper? -Atmoz (talk) 07:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm calling Rule 5. Everybody out of the pool. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:06, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

SBH rule 5 is your rule, not a WIKI rule (Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means).

Atmoz, the reason I made this point is very clear in Ramanathan (1987), look at Fig.1 there you will find sky radiation "327" while the Sun is only "169", now can you show readers just where Ramanathan explains how this leads to the every day experience that cloudy days are cooler than sunny ones?--Damorbel (talk) 15:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Section on aerosols (readability aspects)

Hi User:InformationToKnowledge: regarding the section on aerosols that you had moved to here, have you noticed that it has a very low reading ease score? Are you familiar with the readability tool that you can add to the list of tools. If you use that tool, you'll see that almost the entire section is bright red (meaning it's difficult to understand). If you have time, could you improve on that please (I am assuming, but am not sure, that this is text that you wrote yourself)?

Also, is the amount of space dedicated to aerosols now in this article well balanced compared to the other content? Or should we beef up any of the other content (or use excerpts if the same content is elsewhere). EMsmile (talk) 12:43, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, yes, I originally wrote that for global dimming and then moved that section over here in a bit of a hurry, trying to live up to the feedback I received during the GA review of that article. It could certainly be improved to flow better and fit better with the rest of the article. Some of this content might also be better off reintegrated back to global dimming (or even elsewhere, like ship tracks), but I'm not entirely sure. I would ask @Femke for help with deciding what can stay here and what should go elsewhere, but I fear her long Covid may get in the way again.

In general, I would say this particular article is in a fairly poor state. Lots 20-30 year old references and sentences that emphasize the worst of old Wikipedia scientific writing, being full of complex words while saying very little actionable. Phrasing like Water vapor in the subtropical upper troposphere has been linked to the convection of water vapor and ice. Changes in subtropical humidity could provide a negative feedback that decreases the amount of water vapor which in turn would act to mediate global climate transitions, all cited to a 1998 study of dubious modern-day relevance. The excerpts too, aren't overly relevant, and the newest references tend to be on the more sensational side. It's yet another fairly important article that's going to take some time to fix, unfortunately. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 07:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Merged "cloud forcing" article to here

I've now merged the "cloud forcing" article to here. I've put the content under "mechanisms" for now. I don't know enough about the topic to take the next steps of cleaning up, removing repetition or alike. Hoping that someone else has time and energy for this. Should be an important topic. EMsmile (talk) 07:38, 12 April 2024 (UTC) Copied from the talk page of "could forcing" so that we have it all in one place:

Interestingly, the glossary of the IPCC Six Assessment report WG 1 does not mention "cloud forcing" but does mention "cloud feedback". Is that a sign that "cloud forcing" is no longer a key term that is being used? EMsmile (talk) 23:37, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Support merge (after a skim read - but as I know little I might be convinced otherwise) Chidgk1 (talk) 18:02, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Support merge. While they aren't the same thing (cloud forcing is a consistent part of the climate system, and cloud feedback describes a change which is occurring to it over time), this particular article is in a very bad state (nearly all the references are from 1990s) and it has little potential for expansion. Nowadays, it's the feedback which matters the most to readers, so cleaned-up material from here would help to provide them with context on the feedback article. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 06:45, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

CRE is the most precise term to use in most cases (especially in connection to CRE) because CRF implies a forcing external to climate, which is not the case for most changes in clouds. I have modified the wording. DecFinney (talk) 10:14, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer's feedback

I asked Kevin Trenberth what he thought of this article. He briefly wrote back saying "I did quickly skim it and it is a difficult unsolved issue.  The article says why: all the complexity of albedo, expanse, cloud top height, etc all affect how much radiation is reflected and how much radiated in IR. The CMIP6 models had revisions and all were astray.  No model does this well yet.  A lot relates to microphysics. This paper is good: Raghuraman, S. P., Medeiros, B., & Gettelman, A. (2024). Observational quantification of tropical high cloud changes and feedbacks. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2023JD039364. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD039364

Maybe someone has time to look into this further some time. Would be great. EMsmile (talk) 08:49, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi User:InformationToKnowledge I see you improved this article in May. I am just wondering what the status of this article is now? What are remaining gaps and shortcomings? Were you able to address the comments above by Kevin? EMsmile (talk) 11:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Better image for lead or at least better caption?

During daytime, clouds scatter incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun due to their albedo, which results in substantial cooling

Water vapor in the clouds also absorbs longwave radiation from the Earth's surface and reemits it back. This effect is weaker than the albedo cooling, but it is active day and night

I don't find the image in the lead very clear (see on the right)? It is showing me something about clouds but is it really showing cloud feedback? Perhaps it's in there and just needs a better caption so explain which part of this is now feedback. Or do we need a better image for the lead? EMsmile (talk) 10:11, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

This is showing cloud radiative effect not feedback. The longwave and shortwave effects are what cloud are doing all the time as part of the current climate radiation budget. A feedback diagram would have to show how a cloud changed and how that change affected the radiation. I made a further edit to the caption as I'm not sure the LW effect being weaker is always true. I'll give it some more thought. I think the image is ok. DecFinney (talk) 10:43, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

that said AMS glossary seems a bit confused. it has entry for CRF but not CRE

https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Cloud_radiative_forcing

but only refers to cloud effect, not forcing, in its feedback definition:

https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Cloud_feedback DecFinney (talk) 11:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

This image might be better. It is actually describing cloud feedback https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/chapter-7/figure-7-9 DecFinney (talk) 09:11, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I've made an image an replaced the original one. I'm not certain if I've formatted quite as is expected on Wikipedia.

I'm sure it could be improved upon but at least it now actually represents the article topic, not a sub-component of it. DecFinney (talk) 11:01, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

Collaborative expert review by the UK NERC CLOUDSENSE programme

This review was produced collaboratively by researchers on the UK Natural Environment Research Council programme, CLOUDSENSE. I facilitated the review as part of my role as postdoctoral research fellow on one of the research projects within the CLOUDSENSE consortium. A full copy of the review and description of the process can be read at https://doi.org/10.48785/100/329. Below is a proposed new structure for the page, along with comments of a more general nature. During June 2025, we will aim to implement targeted edits listed in the full review document. If any of the targeted edits require discussion separate Talk topics will be posted. We do not have immediate plans to act upon the general comments below so welcome the wider Wikipedia community to consider them when looking to further improve the page.

Proposed new structure:

1. How clouds affect radiation and climate feedback
2. Cloud feedback mechanisms
3. Representation in climate models
4. Role of aerosol and aerosol-cloud interaction

General comments:

• The introduction and overview sections require substantial changes to make them more logically laid out.
• Types and mechanisms of cloud feedbacks are key to this page but not clearly and sufficiently provided. A review paper from Ceppi et al. (2017) is a good source of information for these. New content would go in the new proposed section called “cloud feedback mechanisms”.
• The last two paragraphs of the overview section are not clearly laid out with literature bouncing between different or sometimes conflicting results.
• We note that whilst our targeted edits (once implemented) will have improved the equations content, more work is needed to ensure the best level of clarity. Our proposed change introduces CRE, and then moves on to cloud feedback. This may be confusing, as CRE feedback and cloud feedback are related but not the same (see e.g. Soden et al. (2004)). Ideally, the text will be expanded to explain the link between CRE and cloud feedback, or perhaps the CRE concept should be skipped altogether (although it is easy to understand and frequently used in the literature, so may be best kept in).

DecFinney (talk) 07:42, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

Sounds great! My quick review as an editor is below; I think these points are all in your extensive review.

1. The current section "Representation in climate models" starts with what in most science wikipedia pages would be called the "History" section. Separating the history content would improve the focus on cloud feedback in modern climate models.
2. The current section "Overview" launches in to equations by the third paragraph. Since the topic is not intrinsically mathematical, the overview should in my opinion avoid formula and focus on a simple description of clouds/radiation/climate/feedback. Similarly the figure in the overview is appropriate for a later more detailed section.
3. The introduction needs to summarize the entire article per WP:LEAD, rather than, as is often the case in other exposition formats, lay a foundation. Some articles include a "Background" section for that latter purpose.
4. A large section on High cloud feedback was recently added and not well integrated. As I understand it, high cloud feedback is a subtype and therefore an outline of "types" and their relationships should precede details of high cloud feedback.
5. I think the section "Possible break-up of equatorial stratocumulus clouds" needs to be reviewed. It seems to be speculation.
6. The lead figure should represent "cloud feedback" directly.

Johnjbarton (talk) 16:10, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

I have held an editathon as part of the CLOUDSENSE programme. We made the targeted edits listed in our review (https://doi.org/10.48785/100%2F329). At the same DOI, you can find a spreadsheet under that lists our edits (though they are also in the edit history of course).

The general comments from our review remain outstanding, as do points 4-6 from @Johnjbarton above. I hope to have a go at some of these in future, but welcome others to also consider them

DecFinney (talk) 07:24, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Please note sources in your edit summary.

A sudden number of edits on this page mention "Cloudsense" in their edit summaries. This is not a Wikipedia source. Please mention a citable source, eg "per Zelinka", instead. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:03, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Cloudsense in the edit summaries is not meant to refer to a particular souce. It has just been included to refer to the fact that these are edits done by CLOUDSENSE researchers as part of their review (see previous Talk page post - Collaborative expert review by the UK NERC CLOUDSENSE programme). Sources for edits are included in edits as per usual. TatjanaClimate (talk) 10:30, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but the edit summaries are used by editors to review changes. At least for me, the top question I always have for edits is "does this change match sources"? By mentioning the source in the edit reviews are much easier. Mentioning 'cloudsense' is just confusing. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:09, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Johnjbarton. Firstly, thank you for keeping an eye on this page and our edits. It's great to know that we have a few persepctives and expertises that can work together to improve this page. It certainly needs it.

We have made all the edits we are going to for now. I hope to come back to this page later in the year to do another assessment, and will be prioritising getting some good sources involved. There were fundamental issues (unsourced) on this page that seemed essential to correct, even if the corrections are not perfectly sourced themselves. It's not simply the case that we could have removed unsourced content -- even the description of how clouds modify radiation was wrong (i.e. it's not water vapour).

As Ive said, I will have another look over with fresh eyes later in the year. However, if there are any edits we've made that particularly concern you regarding the quality of sources, can you point me to them in a reply here and I will look to address them asap. DecFinney (talk) 20:05, 22 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to you and your colleagues for these great improvements! In terms of sources, the most difficult aspect for non-experts is to know the most widely respected textbook or review sources on a given topic. If you know of such a source which is not cited, even noted this on the Talk page would be a great help. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:13, 23 June 2025 (UTC)

Talk page threads get archived so this will get lost. is it easy to have a general reference list for editors that remains permanently?

a good textbook: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Clouds_and_Climate/rvXvDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

a good review (section 3 for cloud feedback types): https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/193005298/104._Hegerl.pdf

IPCC AR6 WG1 7.4.2.4 Cloud Feedbacks https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-7/

It's a reasonably fast moving research field at the moment and therefore shifts in understanding. The basic idea is well understood: cloud amount, height and composition (ice/liquid, particle size/number/shape) affect radiation and can feedback with climate. Different cloud types in different regions have differing effects on radiation, and can have different responses to climate, which is why scientists tend to subset them e.g. subtropical low cloud.

Really this page needs to clearly explain that general picture. and then just have a sort description of each cloud feedback type from those that are somewhat understood at the moment, but then update that frequently. i.e. effort would ideally go into regularly updating opposed to rigorously outlining any individual feedback in depth. High cloud feedback is a good example, understanding of this has changed a lot since the Sherwood review, and I expect will continue to develop in the near-term -- therefore the detail for high cloud feedback provided on this article currently is unwarranted I would say, and gives undue weight compared to other cloud feedbacks. DecFinney (talk) 15:24, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I added the sources as a section "Further reading". Ideally these will become incorporated in the article.

I'll take the blame on the high cloud feedback. Another editor wanted to create an article under that title but I encouraged them to add it here to avoid two weak articles. We could as well split the content into a separate article with a WP:Summary here. But what we need first is a bit on each cloud feedback type. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:02, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton thanks. its great that someone wanted to write it and i think you were right to have the high cloud feedback put in here. a whole article on it is not justified, imi its actually my topic, so when i get a chance i will reduce down a bit. agreed, that priority is to grt a bit on each cloud feedback type. DecFinney (talk) 16:33, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

I've added an example of another feedback. It'd be good if we can get equivalent basic descriptions of the other major non-high-cloud feedbacks described by Sherwood2020. I will try to come to them, but should be easy for anyone to pick out the same kind of info. DecFinney (talk) 14:26, 31 July 2025 (UTC)