Lyrics

Rain your secrets down

Feelin’ that equanimity
Like, “Yeah, whatever will be will be”
But still get jittery considering
Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity

Riddle me this: how hot is it gonna get?
If CO2 levels end up doublin’?
Between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees of extra heat?
You gotta be kidding me

How you gonna plan for a three degree range?
Somewhere between mild fever and extreme pain?
Estimation of ECS
That’s the Holy Grail of the climate quest

The heat trap is set, but sensitivity
Depends on complex feedback effects
Like Planck’s Law, it says: “The hotter it gets
The more radiation a body emits”

That’s a negative feedback, hey that’s great
Coolin’ us off like Lapse Rate change
But the hotter it gets, the more liquid evaporates
And that just jacks up the pace

‘Cause water vapor is a greenhouse gas
That doubles the carbon impact
But whether that final measure goes up or down
Is mostly down to little fluffy clouds

Little fluffy clouds
Spill your secrets out
High wispy clouds
Wrap us in your shroud

Low wavy clouds
Long, dark, and round
Rain your secrets down

Clouds, condensation on aerosols
When you’re talkin’ feedback they’re involved
Bounce sunlight back like a parasol
There’s a real puzzle in there to solve

Does a cloud heat the planet up, or cool it?
Depends on the height and thickness through it
Plus the light reflected like a mirror
Blanket-like high-altitude cirrus

Absorb more heat than they bounce back
Damn, that fixed anvil temperature’s FAT
Warm it up and the clouds move up
Positive feedback heat trap booster

What about low clouds though, in the tropics?
Endless flat vistas to get lost in
They look vast and voluminous now
But those stratocumulus clouds are newly in doubt

In fact, a new model found
That burning enough CO2 from the ground
Can break them up into cumulus clouds
And that’s gonna stop them from cooling us down

Plus, once you bust them up into pieces
It’s tough to go back, ‘cause hysteresis
The past is present, it’s a sequence
We just need clouds to spill their secrets

Little fluffy clouds
Spill your secrets out
High wispy clouds
Wrap us in your shroud

Low wavy clouds
Long, dark, and round
Rain your secrets down

Clouds, leavin’ models jammed up
Since 1970, what’s the answer?
Better science, y’all, that’s what
Add the feedbacks up, that’s “Lambda”

Clouds, are cooling the planet on average
But warming the atmosphere changes the balance
And tiny reshaping of feedback effects
Can have radiative impacts that are massive

And heating the planet is changing the clouds
We need to know how, we need a “Eureka”
To see how the clouds and convection entrain
And which is the swept-up and which is the sweeper

What’s the answer? That’s the wrong frame
Instead ask: “What’s the probability range?”
That feedback dampens or amplifies
And how much is the physics parameterized?

Multiple lines are converging to find
That the bottom is no longer 1.5
For ECS, it’s 2.3 degrees
With a 95% probability

Which means we’re not getting off cheap
I guess that “three degree range” got squeezed
By the gap in the clouds where the light struck
Revised up, so, time to wise up

Tick tick tick…

Time’s up

Little fluffy clouds
Spill your secrets out
High wispy clouds
Wrap us in your shroud

Low wavy clouds
Long, dark, and round
Rain your secrets down

Little fluffy clouds
Rain your secrets down