Tuesday, 19 November 2013 16:20

Clouds of hope

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CRITICS OF New Zealand greenhouse gas emissions should go and wash their mouths out.

 

Our cows may be actually helping to make earth a cooler place. A team of 79 scientists writing in the UK journal Nature this month address the puzzle of how up to half the clouds in the sky are formed. They found that humans play a significant role mainly through pastoral farming.

The 79 scientists from the renowned Cern research laboratory in Switzerland show for the first time how gas vapours, mainly from animal husbandry, can react to create the essential tiny particles around which the condensation droplets that cause clouds form.

Clouds are by far one of the most important controls on global climate because they reflect back to space energy from the sun that would otherwise heat Earth’s atmosphere.

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