Tropical regions to see increased rainfall in coming years;
A new NASA study warns about an increase in rainfall along world's tropical regions due to warming of the earth. Nature communications journal has published a study report stating that most global climate models may underestimate the decrease of clouds in tropical regions-a recent NASA observation.
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Globally, rainfall isn't influenced just by the availability of clouds alone but also by Earth's "energy budget" (a key factor) - insolation compared to outgoing heat energy, according to the study, titled "Tightening of Tropical Ascent and High Clouds Key to Precipitation Change in a Warmer Climate."
High-altitude tropical clouds trap heat in the atmosphere, but if there are fewer of these clouds in the future, the tropical atmosphere will cool, and cooling water vapor in the cold upper atmosphere condenses it, turning it into liquid droplets - rain, or ice particles. When condensing it releases its heat and warms the atmosphere.
Based on recent decades observations, it appears that the atmosphere would create fewer high clouds in response to surface warming. It would also increase tropical rainfall, which would warm the air to balance the cooling from high cloud shrinking, according to this research, led by Hui Su of U.S. space agency NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
According to Su, this study puts pathway to improvise future predictions of precipitation change. Most climate models seem to have underestimated the rate of increase in precipitation for each degree of surface warming that has occurred in recent decades. For data, the team used observations of outgoing thermal radiation from NASA's space-borne Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) and other satellite instruments, as well as ground-level observations. The study said that models that came closest to matching observations of clouds in the present-day climate showed a greater precipitation increase for the future than the other models.
Arsha, The Lantern
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