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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 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.