Chicken Little Might Be Right

Over the past ten years, the height of clouds has been shrinking according to researchers at the University of Auckland. The time frame is short, but if future observations show that clouds are truly getting lower, it could have an important effect on global climate change. “We don’t know exactly what causes the cloud heights to lower,” study researcher Roger Davies said. “But it must be due to a change in the circulation patterns that give rise to cloud formation at high altitude.” Davies and his colleagues have analyzed NASA’s Terra spacecraft’s Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer’s first decade of cloud-top height measurements from March 2000 to February 2010. They found that global average cloud height decreased by around 1 per cent over the decade, a distance of 30 to 40m.