4 ms·

I was curious as to how much energy the enthalpy of fusion corresponds to. Turns out it is less than one day of solar irradiation: https://www.wolframalpha.com

• jfengel 6y ago
  That is, nonetheless, quite a lot. Imagine what would happen on earth if the sun were to disappear for 24 hours. How long would it take for life to return to normal? It's not the net energy gain in the earth from one day of warming, which isn't all that much. It's the total amount of energy that falls on the earth, which is a lot. Enough to do massive damage if it happened all at once. This was spread over 10 years so it doesn't provoke that kind of disaster. But it illustrates what an enormous amount of energy is involved, and is now permanently added to the earth's biosphere. And ten more years will add even more than that, only now we have less ice to moderate it. That means more of the delta will go into warming the seas and the atmosphere.