Observational quantification of tropical high cloud changes and feedbacks

For example, it is uncertain whether their coverage will contract or expand in response to surface warming and whether such changes entail a stabilizing radiative feedback (iris feedback) or a neutral feedback. Global satellite observations with passive and active remote sensing capabilities over the last two decades can now be used to address such effects that were previously observationally limited.

Using these observations, we show that the vertically averaged coverage exhibits no significant contraction or expansion. However, we find a reduction in coverage at the altitude where high clouds peak and are particularly radiatively-relevant. This results in a negative longwave (LW) feedback and a positive shortwave (SW) feedback which cancel to yield a near-zero high-cloud amount feedback, providing observational evidence against an iris feedback.