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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: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 25 2021, @01:31PM
Actually, there's probably no particular reason that the change would need to reduce standard of living...but different groups of people would be the most successful. It would take lots of work, and lots of investment and nobody can prove that a better way might not be available, but it could be done NOW with existing technology. There are lots of deserts that solar panels could fit on, though perhaps molten salt reactors heated by mirrors would be better, as they have intrinsic heat storage capability, so they can continue generating power for weeks of shade. It would be expensive, but that's just redistribution of accounting tokens The real cost is that lots of people would need to spend time building the stuff, and someone would need to support them while they did that. But we've got bigger expenses in the current system that don't return ANY measurable value for most of the population. But there wold be people who are currently in positions of power and highly recompensed that would have their funding diverted, and nobody like that.
The US *should* be spending a lot more on infrastructure than it does. It would be of net benefit to almost all the country. But it would need to be paid for. It's my opinion that schooling should be essentially free through graduate school. And I include trade schools, not just academic schools. (I'm not including room and board, just the instruction.) I'm convinced that it would be a long term net benefit to the country. But it *would* need to be paid for. (I consider that a part of paying for infrastructure in a more general sense that just bridges and highways.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.