Climate change causing clouds to rise higher in the sky and move towards poles

The trend was predicted by climate models and is likely to continue – unless there are major volcanic eruptions

On the move: Clouds have been moving away from the equator in recent years (Getty)

Clouds are moving towards the poles and getting higher in the sky as the planet warms, according to a new study that confirms predictions made by climate models for the first time.

The researchers said the trend was partly caused by greenhouse gas emissions and was likely to continue – unless there were “large volcanic eruptions” that would help cool the Earth.

Satellite records were analysed to plot the movement of cloud storm tracks since the 1980s, the academics said in a paper for the journal Nature.

They found that clouds are moving away from the equator as temperatures rise – a direction of travel currently being taken by many animals and plants. Subtropical dry zones have also been expanding.

The study’s lead author, Professor Joel Norris, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, said: “What this paper brings to the table is the first credible demonstration that the cloud changes we expect from climate models and theory are currently happening.”

Clouds have a significant effect on the Earth’s climate in two contrasting ways.

On the one hand, they help cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation back into space – some scientists have suggested creating cloud artificially to reduce global warming. But clouds also act like a blanket, trapping heat and preventing it from radiating out into space.

The way clouds behave has been poorly understood and represents one of the main sources of uncertainty in predictions about how the climate will change in the future. Until recently scientists did not know how up to half the clouds in the sky formed.

In the Nature paper, the researchers said: “Observed and simulated cloud change patterns are consistent with poleward retreat of mid-latitude storm tracks, expansion of subtropical dry zones, and increasing height of the highest cloud tops at all latitudes.

“The primary drivers of these cloud changes appear to be increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and a recovery from volcanic radiative cooling.

“These results indicate that the cloud changes most consistently predicted by global climate models are currently occurring in nature.

“We expect that increasing greenhouse gases will cause these cloud trends to continue in the future, unless offset by unpredictable large volcanic eruptions.”

Like clouds, volcanic eruptions can both cool and warm the planet, but have an overall cooling effect.

Dust particles shade the Earth from the sun, reducing the temperature, an effect that can last for years if there is a particularly big eruption.

They also release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and in the past, when the Earth was much more geologically active, volcanoes caused significant global warming.