This is what would happen if all the clouds on the planet disappeared

If there are no clouds there is no rain, no ice or snow. That means drinking water supplies would never be replenished.

Stormy Clouds over Palouse, USA Sources: ChipPhillips

Clouds, from the thinnest and lightest to the largest and most imposing, cover 70% of the planet at all times. But what if within a minute all the clouds disappeared? Astronauts on the  International Space Station would be very surprised. But someone who is, for example, hiking in the middle of the desert would not know that things on Earth are about to get very ugly.

However, after a few days, the first alarming sign would appear humidity. It will be much worse if you live on the coast. Normally, the heat from the sun evaporates water, especially from the ocean, and that water vapor condenses into clouds. But if the clouds are left out of the earth's water cycle, that water becomes trapped in the air, creating humidity close to 100%. If you took a flight, you could experience more turbulence than usual. Without the protective covering of the clouds to bounce sunlight back into space,  the sun heats the Earth more, creating more rising and uneven hot air.

But a bad flight can be the least of the worries because there would be neither rain nor snow, not even a slight fog, and that means that there will be no way to replenish the water sources that we use to supply ourselves, such as lakes, streams, rivers, springs, and aquifers. And once the snow from the previous winter melts, the available water will run out. And time is ticking. If the world were to maintain its current volume of water consumption,  all freshwater lakes and rivers would be depleted in about 23 years.

To ensure the supply of freshwater,  humanity will have to be especially creative. Today, the average American uses between 300 and 380 liters of water a day. But, to save humanity, it is going to take more than to skip the long showers and stop doing the laundry. The water used in homes and in public places only represents 21% of world consumption. The 2 main sources of demand are thermoelectric energy to generate electricity and irrigation of farms. Not only do power plants use tons of water, but those that run on nuclear fuel could lead to disaster if their water cooling towers run dry. The Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, for example, originated when an earthquake knocked out power to its water-cooling pumps.

And farms will need even more water without the help of a good flood. This permanent drought would kill entire hectares of vegetation and wild animals as the land dries up. Within a few years, soil erosion could kick up gigantic dust storms like the Dust Bowl phenomenon of the 1930s.

Meanwhile,  the Earth's climate will go completely crazy without the existence of clouds. It's hard to pin down when all of this will happen without a climate model costing millions, but cloud expert  Chris Fairall reveals a couple of quick calculations. Without clouds, the average surface temperature would rise to  22 degrees Celsius. This extreme rise in temperature would not only destroy the habitats of most flora and fauna, wiping out what survived the drought, but it would also melt the polar ice caps and cause massive flooding in coastal cities. You could end up being part of the  40% of the world that would be forced to go inside And your new home could soon be transformed into a never-ending desert as seawater begins to seep in, moving deeper and deeper into the groundwater.

It sounds alarming, but a cloudless world has some advantages. No more devastating hurricanes and tornadoes, flight delays due to storms, and cloudy skies that ruin stargazing. As the water supply dwindles, there will be tough decisions to make, but hey,  humans are very imaginative. They could invent ways to desalinate ocean water or collect water vapor that is in the air.

And the sooner all of this is applied, the better, because in reality, the clouds are already disappearing. The unprecedented levels of CO2 and the warming of the oceans and the atmosphere are causing the clouds to decrease. What little hope there is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and try to avoid that terrifying new world altogether.