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Earth has been trapping heat at an alarming new rate, study finds:
The amount of heat trapped by Earth's land, ocean, and atmosphere doubled over the course of just 14 years, a new study shows.
To figure out how much heat the earth was trapping, researchers looked at NASA satellite measurements that tracked how much of the Sun's energy was entering Earth's atmosphere and how much was being bounced back into space. They compared this with data from NOAA buoys that tracked ocean temperatures — which gives them an idea of how much heat is getting absorbed into the ocean.
The difference between the amount of heat absorbed by Earth, and the amount reflected back into space is called an energy imbalance. In this case, they found that from 2005 to 2019, the amount of heat absorbed by Earth was going up.
[...] The researchers think that the reason the Earth is holding on to more heat comes down to a few different factors. One is human-caused climate change. Among other problems, the more greenhouse gases we emit, the more heat they trap. It gets worse when you take into account that increasing heat also melts ice and snow. Ice and snow can help the planet reflect heat back into space — as they disappear, more heat can be absorbed by the land and oceans underneath.
There's another factor at play too — natural changes to a climate pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Between 2014 and 2019, the pattern was in a 'warm phase' which caused fewer clouds to form. That also meant more heat could be absorbed by the oceans.
Journal Reference:
Norman G. Loeb, Gregory C. Johnson, Tyler J. Thorsen, et al. Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth's Heating Rate, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2021GL093047)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Friday June 25 2021, @05:08AM (5 children)
I think you're trying to be snarky, but you'd be wrong. The mechanism is known as Milankovitch cycles [wikipedia.org] which are driven by positional relationship of the Earth and the Sun. This is why when you look at the historic record, CO2 tends to follow [phys.org] temperature, rather than temperature following CO2. As the temperature increases a large number of natural factors increase the amount of CO2 being released, such as for instance the warming of previously frozen areas where rot had been trapped. These organisms then decay, release their CO2, and so on.
Of course CO2 is also a greenhouse gas and can contribute to warming itself which makes the entire system fabulously complex, but the main driver in our historic trends has been Milankovitch cycles.
This is really something I find so very frustrating about climate discussions. Everybody has an opinion, often an extremely radicalized one, on the topic - one way or the other. Yet very few people understand even the most fundamental basics of Earth's climate. Ultimately I think this is why politics and science mix about as well as oil and water.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @10:26AM (4 children)
> I think you're trying to be snarky
I prefer to be open minded. To persuade anyone, it is imperative to know why they hold their position. They might be right! But even if they are wrong, without knowing *why* they believe something, it is not possible to have a rational discussion (and it degenerates into flaming).
The historical natural temperature variations are quite interesting. Last time I looked, I managed to convince myself that without thinking about the modelling and mechanisms, the fastest natural change in temperature historically is comparable with what scientists claim today (1deg C per century or so). So, again, without thinking about the mechanism, one can just about attribute the current temperature variation to natural variation.
However, there is a strong correlation between the current rate of change of temperature and industrialisation, which is hard to ignore. In detail, it seems to fit well with the modelling that climate change is driven by carbon emissions, if you believe scientists.
> the main driver in our historic trends has been Milankovitch cycles.
Actually, I take issue with this - on longer time scales O(100 M years) the amount of carbon captured in rock and amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has changed dramatically. Your statement is only true over the last O(10 M years) or so. (It's a subject I recently got interested in...)
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday June 25 2021, @03:06PM (3 children)
You're shifting the goal posts. Somebody referenced the natural historical temperature cycle of the planet and our inability to change it, to which you asked him "What's the mechanism" - thinking it was human CO2 emissions which, by definition, would mean we could change it. But of course it's not. Human CO2 is likely magnifying the current trend, but it's not creating it. The planet would be warming rapidly right now, even if humans did not exist.
But let us indulge those shifted goalposts anyhow. Check out the historic record. [wikipedia.org] Those data are based on ice cores. In a nutshell, we can determine the temperature of a time by looking at the ratio of light to heavy oxygen. But the problem is that connecting the gas to a date is relatively imprecise and has a resolution granularity in the ballpark of ~1,000 years. So all we can say is that during the last interglacial (heating) period it heated up (peak to peak) about 18 degrees Celsius in an *extremely* brief period of time.
The same as now? Probably not. You can see a clear trend of increasing magnitudes in the heating ranges. And so even without humans, we'd probably be seeing the most extreme heating during this cycle. But of course we do exist and our CO2 is also contributing to the warming. However, were we in a glacial period right now, it's likely that our emissions would be having 0 effect. We're adding a very negligible amount of CO2 to the entire climate cycling system but such is the nature of systems in a tight equilibrium that a small input can have an unexpectedly large impact.
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Also, you mistake my assumptions. I never try to convince anybody of anything on a topic where they almost certainly already have strong biases. I'm sure you've noticed we live in a world where people will convince themselves that 2+2=5 if that's what's necessary to confirm our biases. Though of course we all believe that's the "other guy" doing that. And media and politicians, both of whom know scarcely more than the public at large, are all so quick to say whatever they think will gain a click or a vote, respectively - including that 2+2=5.
I debate solely for my own enjoyment and also to put you to work. Because instead of relying on trite emotional appeals, hyperbole, ad hominem, partisanship, etc as most do - I try to lay out my views with facts, evidence, and data. And I trust that plenty of those who disagree with me will desperately try to find any crack in anything I've said, and I think that's great. Because if I have said something incorrect, it certainly was not for lack of energy directed towards research or learning. And so I can correct myself for the future. But I, in no way whatsoever, expect you to change your views - because people rarely do so on topics they have a substantial bias towards. If you do? Cool. If you don't? That's also cool - people should all be entitled to believe whatever they want.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @03:58PM
> thinking it was human CO2 emissions which, by definition, would mean we could change it.
No I wasn't.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday June 25 2021, @04:18PM (1 child)
> Check out the historic record. Those data are based on ice cores.
It's hard to see the data because of the fit line; but the greatest rate of change seems to be about 5-10 data points long, i.e. 5,000 to 10,000 years and about 20 deg C difference. That's about 1 deg C per few hundred years. So given a bit of squint factor/uncertainty in reading the plot, that is a bit less than the current rate of change of 1 deg C per 100 years, which is what we have now. That's consistent with my statement that
> the fastest natural change in temperature historically is comparable with what scientists claim today
Just to be clear: I'm agreeing with you!
> we'd probably be seeing the most extreme heating during this cycle.
Where maybe we deviate is in this statement. All I can do is look at plots showing the rate of change in the last few hundred years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#/media/File:Common_Era_Temperature.svg [wikipedia.org]
I note the strong upwards swing that is highly correlated with industrialisation. Then a person comes along who has done the detailed modelling and says "industrialisation caused this". So it sort of seems obvious and I believe the person.
If someone else came with a model/evidence that showed earth orbit has changed drastically in the last 100 years (or orbital precession, or axis of rotation), then I would listen to them. I never heard anyone say this with enough detail to support the argument - i.e. beyond "guy on the internet" level statements. Even just a dumb plot showing mean orbit radius or something would be evidence. Indeed, the plot you put out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles#/media/File:MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png [wikipedia.org]
shows that we are probably at the peak of the cycle, where the *rate of change* is expected to be smallest. So sudden leap in "rate of change" in temperature is extraordinary and not really supported by the model. Again, someone could come with detailed model that says that these Milankovitch cycles are really causing things and I would at least listen. But I never saw anyone knowledgeable (i.e. not "guy on the internet") propose that.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Saturday June 26 2021, @01:37PM
If you want to seek out differing hypotheses on the latest 1 degree of increase then you can find them being espoused by people with the highest degree of credentialing you might seek. A typical one is precisely what's mentioned in this article and which the masses seem to have entirely glossed over. Cloud coverage is a dynamic system which has a tremendous effect on the level of warming. This has relatively little to do with what we were discussing, however - which was what causes the cyclical warming and cooling patterns of the Earth. And that is Milankovitch cycles.