The study, published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, shows how dust from snow- and ice-free areas affects cloud behavior.
The conventional wisdom was that warming in the Arctic produced clouds with more liquid droplets and fewer ice crystals, leading to denser, longer-lived clouds that reflected sunlight and cooled the region. But researchers found that as temperatures rise, snow and ice cover decreases, releasing more dust into the atmosphere. This dust encourages the formation of ice crystals, making clouds thinner and shorter-lived, reducing their reflectivity and potentially increasing summer warming.
Researchers analyzed 40 years of data (1981-2020) using the CAM-ATRAS climate model and found that Arctic dust emissions increased by 20% and significantly affected cloud dynamics. Dust-induced “ice nucleation” outpaced the temperature-related decrease in ice crystal formation by 30% annually in the Arctic and 70% in summer.
Source: Ferra
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