hydrometeors

Although the water-absorbing particles sped up the growth of cloud droplets and therefore the formation of precip-size "hydrometeors" (you have to love the terminology in this field), the rain would have fallen eventually if the clouds had been left alone.

Who’ll Stop the Rain? 2008

My own estimate is that at present, somewhere around two thirds to three quarters of any additional change in forcing goes to parasitic losses sensible and latent heat plus hydrometeors, but it could be more.

Unthreaded #7 « Climate Audit 2007

However, the actual change at present is almost sure to be less than that, because of increased parasitic losses convection, evaporation, transpiration, and hydrometeors with increasing temperature.

More Unthreaded « Climate Audit 2007

But since the parasitic losses sensible heat, latent heat, vertical transport to regions of reduced GHGs, and hydrometeors increase with increasing temperature, the current sensitivity must be less than the sensitivity averaged over the whole range.

The "First" Assessed Likely Range for Climate Sensitivity « Climate Audit 2007

The amount of energy transferred from place to place in the hurricane by hydrometeors, while not as large as the wind energy, is far too large to ignore.

More Bender on Hurricane Counts « Climate Audit 2006

Finally, along with clouds we get parasitic losses to the greenhouse conduction, convection, evaporation, condensation, hydrometeors, all of which tend to cool the earth.

CMIP Control Runs « Climate Audit 2006

However, all of these losses evaporation, transpiration, conduction/convection, and hydrometeors serve to cool the surface by reducing the efficiency of the system.

More Bender on Hurricane Counts « Climate Audit 2006

This is why all of the meteorological phenomena, from wind to evaporation to clouds to Hadley cell circulation to hydrometeors and on down the list, cool the earth — because they are parasitic losses to a heat engine, and thus cannot possibly heat the surface.

USCCSP: Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere « Climate Audit 2006

These parasitic losses, in the form of evaporation, transpiration, conduction, convection, turbulence, and hydrometeors, have the effect of radically decreasing the temperature change from a given change in forcing.

More Bender on Hurricane Counts « Climate Audit 2006

Finally, this water, with the heat content removed, is precipitated directly to earth in the form of hydrometeors, further cooling the surface, which as mentioned above is the metric of interest.

More Bender on Hurricane Counts « Climate Audit 2006