That's interesting. How relevant is energy transport in comparison to the optical effects?
Eg: my understanding is that hurricanes are net cooling because they transport heat from the ocean surface to the upper atmosphere. Presumably the same can be said for cumulonimbus/thunderheads? Or perhaps it is more relevant when they form in the day and when they dissipate at night?
This is related to my reply above, but clouds in general move heat upwards in the atmosphere through latent heating.
When you evaporate water from the surface, you cool it (like sweating keeps you cool). This water vapour is then lifted by convection until it cools enough to condense and form a cloud. As the water vapour condenses, the opposite happens and it heats the atmosphere locally (this further invigorates the convection)
Once you have condensed enough water (and the water droplets/crystals are large enough), you form precipitation. This falls back to the surface (some evaporates along the way), where the process starts again.
This transporting of energy through the water cycle is an important component of how energy moves in the Earth system - you can see it on this figure as 'latent heating', moving energy away from the surface at something like 80Wm^-2
Eg: my understanding is that hurricanes are net cooling because they transport heat from the ocean surface to the upper atmosphere. Presumably the same can be said for cumulonimbus/thunderheads? Or perhaps it is more relevant when they form in the day and when they dissipate at night?