Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumVanishing ocean smell could also mean fewer clouds
http://grist.org/news/vanishing-ocean-smell-could-also-mean-fewer-clouds/?w=250&h=165
Open your eyes: The clouds are disappearing, too.
Next time youre at the beach take a deep, long sniff: That special coastal scent might not last forever. While youre at it, put on some extra sunscreen: As that smell dwindles, cloud cover could, too.
The unique oceanside smell that flows over your olfactory organs is loaded with sulfur dimethylsulfide, to be exact, or DMS. Its produced when phytoplankton decompose. And its a fragrant compound thats as special as it smells: In the atmosphere it reacts to produce sulfuric acid, which aids in the formation of clouds.
But its a smell thats endangered by climate change. Experiments have linked the rising acidity of the worlds oceans to falling levels of DMS. A paper published online Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change warns that ocean acidification could reduce DMS emissions by about one-sixth in 2100 compared with pre-industrial levels.
Clouds do more for us than just dispense quenching rain and snow: They also reflect light and heat away from the earth, helping to keep temperatures down.
Politicalboi
(15,189 posts)We die.
woodsprite
(11,854 posts)in Delaware. I made the comment to hubby that it just
didn't smell like the beach. Here I was blaming it on being
Delaware.
Dustlawyer
(10,493 posts)worries.
pa28
(6,145 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)And there is no where to go to escape what is going on.
Climate nightmare would be more appropriate than "Change" or the other words used.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)And here I was complaining. About to stomp out the door and appreciate it today. This is not good. The world really needs to get together and do more to curb pollution and counter global warming. What are we waiting for?!
CRH
(1,553 posts)this article says the clouds are disappearing. However many other articles say the largest GHG, water vapor is in positive feed back which produces more clouds as more water is stored in the atmosphere. This feedback is said to be temperature driven and contributes to further warming because of the heat trapping green house effect. In counter point, the OP article says the albedo effect of increased clouds is a cooling influence or negative feedback, that the clouds reflect light and heat back out into space.
So on one hand, the clouds trap heat from escaping, on the other hand they reflect incoming light and heat back into space. I guess the obvious question is, which is dominate in effect, the heat trapping or heat reflecting qualities of clouds?
Everything I have read indicates the overall effect of increased water vapor, (clouds), is a positive feedback to the global heating phenomenon.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)At least here in SoCal. I wonder which soil microbe that causes that that we are wiping out now..........
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Seems to me you could always smell rain before it came.