Clouds substantially impact Earth’s energy budget by reflecting solar radiation back to space and by restricting emission of thermal radiation to space. Most of the uncertainty in how much the planet will warm in response to greenhouse gas emissions is due to uncertainty in how clouds will respond and impact Earth’s energy budget.  Records of cloudiness from satellites originally designed to monitor weather are plagued by erroneous variability related to changes in satellite orbit, instrument calibration and other factors, making them unsuitable for assessing how clouds have been responding to global warming. In this study, a partially DOE-funded team used novel techniques to remove spurious variability from the satellite cloud records. The corrected records exhibited several large-scale patterns of cloud change between the 1980s and 2000s: poleward retreat of mid-latitude storm tracks, expansion of subtropical dry zones, and increasing height of the highest cloud tops.  These changes were found in several independent datasets, and were shown to be consistent with cloud changes robustly predicted by global climate models. All of these changes are likely to have had a warming effect on the planet, and lend credence to the amplifying cloud feedbacks that are present in nearly all climate models.