Clouds rearrange

As Alex W. has pointed out to me, PhysOrg.com informs about the work of

• Prof. Philip Goode et al.

who measured the moon's earthshine to see how much light the Earth reflects. (Goode's page is here.) It turns out that the Earth is currently reflecting significantly more light than back in 2000. However, this effect did not cause cooling because the percentage of high-lying "warming" clouds has increased a lot during the recent years while the percentage of low-lying "cooling" clouds has decreased. The changes is such that the difference between the high-lying and low-lying clouds has doubled. If you don't understand how these things exactly work and why some of the clouds are "warming" clouds, be sure that you're not the only one. ;-)

Nevertheless, Goode et al. present new evidence that we don't understand the crucial mechanisms that actually decide about the significant part of the Earth's climate dynamics. Clouds matter, they are poorly represented in the existing models, and multidecadal cycles may exist.