Re:Five Pacific islands disappear as sea levels rise
by Hondor on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @01:32AM
(#11672827)
Homeostasis could be achieved by a balance of waver vapor and cloud cover which are both strong factors on temperature but acting in the opposite directions.
"Thus the possible positive and negative feedbacks associated with increased water vapor and cloud formation can cancel one another out and complicate matters. The actual balance between them is an active area of climate science research."
http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatescie...
Re:Five Pacific islands disappear as sea levels rise
by ci5er on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @11:21AM
(#11676110)
At the macro-level, sure. That's one effect. At the micro (?) level, there's an interesting effect where stands of trees (and rain forests) will emit cooling aerosols directly into their canopy. Pretty cool!
I have no dog in this hunt - but I believe that short- and medium- term projections that start diverging from actuals almost on the first day are a problem for getting broad support for the hypothesis.
And it's a very interesting question, don't you think? Why aren't temperatures going up more? Is the earth modulating it somehow? The biosphere appears to attempt to maintain some kind of thermal homeostasis, and appears to be better at cooling the hot than warming the cold. How does that work?