From: Watts Up With That?

By: Mike Jonas

Date: June 5, 2020

Cloud Feedback, if there is any, is Negative

ABSTRACT

"Virtually all the climate models referenced by the IPCC show a strong positive cloud feedback. Cloud feedback is the process by which a changing surface temperature affects cloud cover, which in turn affects surface temperature. In this paper, all monthly satellite data for sea surface temperatures and cloud cover over the oceans, for the whole available period of July 1986 to June 2017, is analysed, in order to test this feature of the climate models. As expected, the trends for the overall period are of rising sea surface temperatures and of falling cloud cover. But the analysis also shows an unexpected relationship between sea surface temperature and cloud cover: increases in sea surface temperature are associated with increases – not decreases – in cloud cover over the next few months. Moreover, the cloud cover increases tend to intercept a greater proportion of incoming solar radiation than they do of outgoing ocean radiation. The inevitable conclusion is that cloud feedback is negative. In any case, the observed reduction in cloud cover over the oceans between 1986 and 2017 could not have been a feedback from rising temperature. The implications for climate models are devastating." ...

Cloud Feedback, if there is any, is Negative