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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

Computation of Atmospheric Concentrations of Molecular Clusters from ab initio Thermochemistry
Published on: April 8, 2020
Thermodynamics of climate change between cloud cover, atmospheric temperature and humidity
Víctor Mendoza1, Marni Pazos2, René Garduño1
1Instituto de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y Cambio Climático, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, C.P. 04510, Mexico City, Mexico.
Abstract:
On a global and annual average, we find a parameterization in which the cloud cover increase is proportional to the mid tropospheric temperature increase, with a negative proportionality factor. If the relative humidity is conserved throughout the troposphere, a 1 °C heating (cooling) of the mid troposphere, decreases (increases) the cloud cover by 1.5 percentage points (pp). But if the relative humidity is not conserved, then the cloud cover decreases (increases) by 7.6 pp. If the shortwave reflection effect of the cloud cover is dominant on a global scale, this parameterization leads to a predominant positive feedback: if the temperature increases like in the current climate change, the cloud cover decreases and more solar radiation reaches the surface increasing the temperature even more. The contribution of the present work consists in finding that the negative sign of the proportionality factor is due to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation; that is, to the magnitude of the derivative of the saturation vapor pressure at the typical standard surface temperature of 288 K. The negative sign of the factor is independent on the conservation or non-conservation of relative humidity in the troposphere under climate change.
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