Title: Effects of clouds on the prediction of global warming.
Abstract: Clouds have two opposing effects on climate. On the one hand, clouds reflect solar radiation and exert a cooling effect on climate. On the other hand, they reduce the effective temperature for outgoing terrestrial radiation and contribute to the warming of climate. These two effects are discussed in terms of the cloud radiative forcing observed by satellites, cloud feedback effects using a radiative-convective model, and global warming predicted by three-dimensional climate models.There still remains a large uncertainty in the sensitivity of the climate to doubling the CO2 concentration due to incomplete treatment of clouds in the present climate models. Much effort should be done to improve the cloud modeling to obtain a reliable prediction of the global warming.