Global warming to be far worse than anyone had predicted, new cloud analysis study says

Clouds contain far more liquid, rather than ice, than had been previously presumed — and the finding could have a huge impact for current models of climate change

Africa's highest mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro rises over clouds late afternoon on December 13, 2009 (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Climate change could be far, far worse than had previously been precited, according to a new study.

New research explored the make-up of clouds, and found that they contained far more liquid water than ice, scientists write in a new study in Science. The ice that clouds contain helps to reflect radiation from the sun back into space — and so the more water that they contain, the more of that radiation will be able to make its way to Earth.

The study also found that fewer clouds are going to change into that state in the future. That will also mean that the planet could warm more and more quickly than had previously been predicted.

Scientists now hope to do more work to understand the exact make-up of clouds, and how it will change our models of the planet’s warming. It still remains unclear how exactly clouds will change as the climate warms, which is difficult to understand because of the fluctuations in how clouds form and are distributed.

But it could mean that previous hopes for keeping global warming to 2C could be difficult if not impossible to keep to. That upper limit on how much the planet will be able to warm could have to be revised upwards because of the huge new findings about the make-up of clouds, the researchers have said.