It’s a cloudy day…

~ Live & Learn

…clouds remain one of the least understood—or least reliably predictable—factors in our climate models…

“They are among the biggest uncertainties in predicting future climate change,” Da Yang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, told me.Yang is a cloud expert—a cloud guy, really, drawn to their mysteries. He recently moved from California to Chicago, where he gets to see a lot more clouds on a daily basis. “I find clouds are beautiful to watch,” he said. “If I take an airplane, and I can see clouds down below or far away, I’m always fascinated by how rich the cloud organizations are. How they interact with each other …” He trailed off. Clouds are complex and ephemeral, which makes them difficult to fully understand. Yang listed for me key aspects of clouds for which we still lack comprehensive understanding: how they form, what determines their spatial scale, how long they can last. “Those sound like simple questions,” he said, “but they are actually at the forefront of the field.” […]

One major stumbling block is the resolution of climate models, or how finely or coarsely they represent the Earth; to represent individual clouds, which can be the size of a minivan or the state of Minnesota, would require models at a resolution finer than the current finest model. Climate modelers have recently begun to produce fine-scale models at the regional level, where they can zoom in on the individual details of clouds. But, Yang told me, stitching such snapshots together into a picture of the whole globe would exceed the capacity of the largest existing supercomputer……

— Zoë Schlanger, from “No One Really Understands Clouds. They’re one of the greatest climate mysteries left.” (The Atlantic, May 28, 2024)

DK Photo: May 29, 2024 @ 7:00 pm.

35 thoughts on “It’s a cloudy day…”

  1. honestly, whatever next? I have always loved clouds, and still remember vividly the times I was laying in the grass at my grandmother‘s and doing my studies. But do I want to know all THAT much about them? No, I enjoy the mystery, beauty, power and unpredictability of them, all the more as they remain an unfathomable wonder. An English friend was so fascinated by clouds that she joined a (probably American) group of cloud explanations. And yes, that photo is marvellous and I love them all. I returned just now from a Early Morning Concert at 7am (required a 20‘ sharp walk to the place) – the sun was shining, it was all pretty wonderful, on my return I phoned HH at work who said: It‘s cloudy again and I looked out of the window and heaven was hanging so low that I thought I was in the wrong film…. clouds!

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  2. Back in 1978 I was looking forward to flying for the first time. My parents were newly separated and my mother was sending me to temporarily live with my grandparents in California. Naturally I was excited for the flight and it didn’t disappoint. I had a window seat in the front row and spent most of it looking into those titanic fluffy, ever-changing canyons in the sky. Seeing clouds from above instead of below was a magical experience. These days when I fly I choose the aisle seat and don’t look out, not because the scenery has lost its appeal, but because my physical tolerance for anything that moves the horizon around disappeared in my early twenties, which is unfortunate. I even get queasy just driving by an amusement park.

    In any case, being an amateur artist I still look for inspiration in the clouds. Even violent thunderheads have a massive appeal to me. I’ve seen storms in Iowa thirty plus years ago that were miles wide with brilliant lighting strikes that spanned from horizon to horizon. To be under that deafening and turbulent mixture and come out clean on the other side is, to me, like being washed by the hand of God.

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  4. So true about clouds here in Chicago. And especially the past 5 years. The weather pattern has changed.
    I also thing clouds are affected by what’s underneath. The clouds here look one way, then change completely when they get over downtown.

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      1. Not because I live here, but chicago is the prettiest of them all. My mother was here for the past 10 days. Falls I’m love with chicago everytime she’s here.

        This guy works where I work.

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      2. I was quite shocked to read that we don’t have enough compute power yet to model clouds. I guess that means we won’t see super accurate weather forecasting in my lifetime. I’ll just have to settle for looking out the window each morning… A good thing!

        I think I’m burning out on technology (maybe… More research needed!)

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  6. I loved this cloud picture from last week…. but the ones you took this morning are high on the top of the list for me.

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  7. Clouds, if only I could push the clouds away. I look at clouds everyday from my sanctuary. Just watch. Enjoy them. Blue clouds. White clouds. Dark clouds. Climate change? Heh!

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          1. (Apologies for a rambling run-on sentence in advance.)

            Pretty fluffy white clouds decorating a blue sky… Priceless. Heavily overcast days (no sun or blue sky in sight… only thick layers of gray)… that stick around for days (even a week) at a time… depressing… Particularly in winter when you look up and see gray skies, and then you look at the ground and see white snow… And you appear to be living in a monochrome world…Suck. Vermont is high on the list of the most cloudy states in the country (not too many people know that). (End of rant.)

            Fabulous photo Dave! 🙂 🙂

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  8. Fantastic, photo!

    I love clouds, photos of clouds, clouds in paintings, in movies…most of all I love the clouds from the comfort of my backyard, garden bed…I take photos of clouds all the time…I love to watch the clouds when I’m a passenger in a car…or while at the beach – waves & clouds.

    As a child me and my siblings used to lay on the grass watching the clouds pass & mentioning what the shape of a particular cloud, resembled…when I would float in our pool the clouds would move above and block the sun as if on cue – the relief from the bright sun, appreciated…I’d climb a tree & sit on a branch watching the clouds from below as the void between the leaves of the trees provided peek-a-boo glimpses, of the glorious sky filled with fluffy clouds…

    A few days ago, I noticed a headline which mentioned, NASA & their quest for, cloud data:

    NASA asking people to watch clouds <<< just google, apparently for years they’ve been hoping that Citizen Scientist to observe and report about clouds!

    Dave, thanks for sharing the photo, which prompting me to reminiscence.

    Wondrous, Clouds!!!

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