Earth as a cloud planet
Graeme Stephens told Earth & Sky, "Art and science are both ways of expressing the world around us. Science is expressed in terms of math - and art is expressed in terms of shapes and colors. If you see it from both sides, you get a richer world view." Useful Pursuit of Shadows
JB: This is Earth & Sky, speaking with Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University. Many people think of Earth as a “water planet.”
DB: But Stephens told Earth & Sky that Earth is also a cloud planet.
Graeme Stephens: You know, we think about the Earth as a blue planet with lots and lots of water. But in fact, the water that’s in clouds, which is absolutely tiny compared to the water in the oceans is perhaps the most critical water of all for us because it’s the water that replenishes the lakes and rivers and restocks our aquifers and it’s the water that we use to sustain life and produce food. So water, in clouds, is really important for us. You know, how much rain falls from clouds is absolutely important for life on Earth.
JB: Stephens also said that clouds profoundly affect Earth’s weather and climate.
Graeme Stephens: It’s the heat generated inside the massive clouds and storms that drive hurricanes for example. So clouds shape our weather, they fuel the storms and very much influence our climate.
DB: For all the reasons he mentioned above, Stephens studies clouds. He’s lead scientist for CloudSat – a satellite mission that measures how much water is in clouds around the world.
JB: He hopes this information will help scientists understand how global warming might change patterns of rainfall and snowfall. We have more from Graeme Stephens – including his original oil paintings of clouds – at earthsky.org. Our thanks today to NASA. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
See more of Graeme Stephens’s cloud paintings at the Cloudsat Art Gallery.
Thanks to:
Graeme Stephens
Principal Investigator, CloudSat
Science Team Member, CALIPSO
Colorado State University
Atmospheric Science Department
Fort Collins, CO
Additional Teacher Resources
NASA CloudSat
NASA launched the CloudSat and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) spacecraft to study the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating the weather, climate and air quality of the Earth.
NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies Cloud Climatology
In order to predict the climate several decades into the future, we need to understand many aspects of the climate system, one being the role of clouds in determining climate sensitivity. Clouds affect climate, and are in turn affected by changes in the climate. The relationship is a complicated system of feedbacks, in which clouds modulate Earth’s radiation balance.
