Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Clouds Heat Polar Regions*

More Clouds tend to heat the Polar Regions, while less clouds
heat the tropics.

This should appear self evident? i.e -
A/. Fewer tropic clouds radiate more heat back into space.
B/. More clouds trap heat in the air.
Its this warmer air reaching the Polar regions, that is tending
to melt it.

Anyone disagree with this?
Since:
The slant angle of the Sun on all Polar regions, can hardly do as much melt damage, as incoming warmish cloud trapped Polar air.

I have had this thought after taking a quick look at 'Hadley Cells' plus the CERES data, averaged from 7 different Spacecraft.
However I must state, my *comment is not a direct result of any info contained below.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/2002/200201317366.html

Various comments of mine in-"Its raining at The North Pole" in this Forum earlier. With attention to Artic windspeed, and that rain has to condense around something, before it falls, have helped in coming to my conclusion.
Plus the fact that there are so many unknowns within the 'Climate Equation' that we should use only the latest ten year old Datas, and wait and see.

Even Dr Bruce Wielicki suggests that "Since clouds were thought to be the weakest link in predicting future climate change from greenhouse gases, these new results are unsettling"

I would go with a day/night thing instead. At night, if there are clouds, then heat is not allowed to rise, so dew and frost are not formed on the grass. During the day, if there are clouds, then the sun cannot warm the surface much. I am experiencing such a day right now. From midnight until now, under a cover of clouds, the temp has held steady around 6 degrees. There has been little wind from the south east during most of that time.

Look at how cold a desert like the Sahara,gets at night even though it gets so hot during the day.

The polar regions that have months of night would require clouds to retain heat and are only warmed by wind.

There is also the observation from Canadian Inuit near Rankin Inlet (62° 49.200' N) that they have been able feel the heat of the sun in December and January for the past 7 years. They have had to start to wear sunscreen because of this.

I think the question is : how do we model whether clouds are net positive or net negative impact ? I would hazard a guess that more clouds in the tropics is net negative and more clouds at the poles is net positive. Also I would guess that there are major differnece stothe energy in / energy out balance dependent on wheter its over land or over sea ..... this must be very difficult to model ....

Yes you are right, the day/night influx of polar wind, would have a greater heating effect than the same, during the long winters.
Point taken, regarding how cold it can get in the Sahara at night.
But I am amazed that the Inuit has taken to using a sunscreen?
Could it be that some of them have found it useful to protect their skin from the bitterly cold winter winds?
I mean the Artic ozone layer is not nearly as big, as down over Antartica, where the UV effects out to the Australians.

That difference in the size of both ozone holes is strange. Since we have more industry in our Northern Hemisphere, I would have thought our hole should be bigger. Is this another strange anomaly? Or is there a reason I am not aware of?

Usage of sunscreen is hardly solid evidence of anything climactic ... maybe it just became fashionable not to look wrinkled and weatherbeaten ...

The use of sunscreen was promoted when hunters suddenly started to get sunburned in the winter. According to their elders, the ability to feel the heat of the sun in January was new as were the incidents of sunburn cases. I had heard about this on a CBC One radio interview about 2 years ago.

(Not so new) - New clues to ozone depletion


http://reporter.leeds.ac.uk/press_releases/current/ozone.htm