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Climate science

Clouds unfazed by haze

Nature volume 546, pages 483–484 (2017)Cite this article

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The extent to which aerosols affect climate is highly uncertain. Observations of clouds interacting with aerosols from a volcanic eruption suggest that the effect is much smaller than was once feared. See Article p.485

Early studies10,11,12 focused on how aerosols interact with radiation directly, and first raised the spectre of a large aerosol forcing — so large, according to one study, that it would prematurely lead Earth to the next ice age10. It has since become clear3,13 that factors that were neglected or discounted led these studies to greatly overstate the contribution of aerosol–radiation interactions to aerosol forcing. Less clear has been how aerosol–cloud interactions influence this forcing14.

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Figure 1: Sulfur dioxide emissions from the 2014–15 volcanic eruption in Holuhraun, Iceland.

Arctic-Images/Getty

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, 20146, Germany

    Bjorn Stevens

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  1. Bjorn Stevens
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Correspondence to Bjorn Stevens.

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Stevens, B. Clouds unfazed by haze. Nature 546, 483–484 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/546483a

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