Double Whammy!

[Donkeiller]

As if the almost continuous cloud is not bad enough...

Clouds amplify light pollution!!!

The brightness of the nightly sky glow over major cities has been shown to depend strongly on cloud cover. In natural environments, clouds make the night sky darker by blocking the light of the stars but around urban centers, this effect is completely reversed, according to a new study by a group of physicists and ecologists at the Free University of Berlin (FU) and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB).

“We found that overcast skies were almost three times brighter than clear at our rural location, and ten times as bright within the city itself,” says the lead author of the study, Dr. Christopher Kyba, physicist at the Institute for Space Sciences at the FU. Their research was reported on March 2nd, 2011, in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

[JamesF]

I can't see for the life of me why anyone should think this is news.

Surely it's obvious that whilst clouds will block starlight and moonlight, they do that because water droplets have a habit of reflecting the light that hits them and will therefore reflect some light from below as well, making the sky appear brighter over a large source of light?

Am I missing something complicated here?

James

[lukebl]

...I can't see for the life of me why anyone should think this is news.....

My thoughts entirely. You only have to go out on a night with low cloud, to see the bright sickly orange glow! A no-brainer. Doesn't need a team of scientists to work that one out.

[Tantalus]

You only have to go out on a night with low cloud, to see the bright sickly orange glow! A no-brainer. Doesn't need a team of scientists to work that one out.

Here Here. I could've told 'em that!