10 ms·

Earth is trapping twice as much heat as it did in 2005

58 points by ijidak 5y ago

ijidak 5y ago
Can someone confirm? Is the science behind this accurate? If true, this seems more meaningful than telling us CO2 levels...
- jfengel 5y ago
  Yes, it's accurate. It's just repeating the same thing you've been told for decades, in different terms. It's a different calculation for the same temperature and radiation data they were already gathering. They haven't just been telling you the CO2 levels. They've also been telling you the temperature, which are around .5C/1F over the long-term average. Increasing temperature and increasing energy imbalance are one and the same thing. Trap more energy, get more temperature: it's the same Q=(delta T)mc you learned in high school chemistry. It's just that we know that increasing CO2 is the reason for it, and it's the thing we can do something about.
beprogrammed 5y ago
Sure feels like it outside
themodelplumber 5y ago
Strange not to have heard of this before, but it seems like it could be a really helpful metric. It's unfortunate that the data doesn't go back terribly far though. It's nice to be able to look at a trend on one time scale, but without longer periods mapped for additional context it's difficult to know if the current trend is a local maximum on a wider scale. Correct me if I'm thinking about this wrong...
- jfengel 5y ago
  Temperature is a good proxy for energy imbalance. Temperature changes to push the energy imbalance back towards zero. That's something easily demonstrated in a laboratory; it's basic physics. We've got plenty of long-term temperature charts, calculated in a variety of different ways. Wikipedia seems as good a place to start as any: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record This metric isn't really new. It's just becoming public because somebody's hoping that a new way to look at the same information might finally click with somebody. There hasn't really been anything new for decades about climate change, except the long steady drumbeat of data confirming the predictions. Which is no surprise: the basic physics and chemistry of climate change is really quite straightforward and well understood.
aurizon 5y ago
CO2 is one metric, CH4(methane) is another. This net heat absorbency is a third, humidity is a fourth - all these metrics sum to give the net earth heating. This one had (apparently) been neglected or not properly accounted for. Is this a true error or data burying? In any event, entrapment of twice as much heat over a time span of 16 years is concerning. If we get another doubling over the next 16 years - how will this affect warming patterns? Weather? The north american drought? The North african drought?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  Is there any stats on the contribution of (shipping industry) bunker fuel, SO2 emissions
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Global bunker C fuel use is dealt with here. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/bunker-fuel https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sci... It is a large factor due to high sulfur 27,000 ppm
revscat 5y ago
I used to think I would die of old age before the worst of climate change hit, leaving it to my children to deal with. I’m not so sure any longer. Regardless, I have little faith that a species which values money and reproduction so highly will be able to affect the changes needed to stave off apocalypse.
AltonWells 5y ago
It’s become abundantly apparent over the past few years that climate change is striking right now. Unfortunately it’s still in 1st gear and we are far from yet close to some truly horrendous changes in earths equilibrium. In college (4-5 years ago) I often tried to explain to friends how much energy was required to add a single degree in average temperature to the worlds oceans (it’s a fuck ton) and we’re well past that point. I’m genuinely convinced this will lead to an extinction level event where we either make it through radically changed or society as a whole catastrophically fails.
- peytn 5y ago
  Checking the paper, if we’re talking the past few years, it looks like this oscillation could be a big factor: > An unusually intense PDO phase that began in about 2014 caused a reduction in cloud formation above the ocean, which also resulted in the increased absorption of incoming energy by the planet, the scientists said.
  - AltonWells 5y ago
    That’s one of the scariest potentials of higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Maybe it’s just a phase now but a significant reduction in clouds is actually a predicted outcome from increased heating. It’s really not looking great.
- ppf 5y ago
  There's an astronomical difference between the surface temperature and the temperature of the entire ocean rising by one degree.
  - lasc4r 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you under the impression that ocean temps haven't gone up by 1c since industrialization? Because they have.
    - ppf 5y ago
fogihujy 5y ago
So... Are we screwed?
- __warlord__ 5y ago
  Most probably... yes
- midjji 5y ago
  Nah, reading the ipcc reports and predictions, the worst case is a bunch of poor people in poor countries will suffer, and a refugee crisis on the scale of 100-300M will happen, which in turn will trigger wars and diseases that actually kill people. Syria being a good example of what this looks like as it already happened there (exactly as predicted by the ipc almost a decade earlier btw), and according to them, pakistan is next. As for the rich countries, there will be significant infrastructure costs, a nasty realization about border control, but most will be fine. Even countries like the netherlands that are at exceptional risk solved a problem like this in the 15th century. If by screwed you mean 2% of the population dying due to climate change, and roughly the same amount of total infrastructure damage then sure, were screwed, but its not a civilizational threat. Not to say it isnt bad, the loss of biosphere and the unique and irreplaceable information it contains is an absolute tragedy.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    If you are part of that 2%, then yes, you are screwed. If you are reading this, though, you probably aren't part of that 2%. The rich will be fine, the poor will get fucked directly as a result of the actions of the rich. Same as it ever was.
alexchamberlain 5y ago
I read the headline as the amount of energy radiated has halved, but from the article I think it's the difference between what is absorbed and what has been radiated has doubled? I don't want to take away from the shocking findings, but I like to understand what the actual numbers mean.
midjji 5y ago
So a basic computation of the total greenhouse effect using a blackbody assumption and an albedo of 0.7, that of stone and water, shows that the atmosphere i.e. the greenhouse effect lifts the temperature of the earth from -70C to 4C. Details can be changed about a bit, but the size of the earth and the temperature of the sun, and their distance are pretty damned exact. Minor sources like residual heat, radiological warming and lunar gravity stirring are too small and can be ignored. So if it had been doubled it would have increased to 78 C, which is obvious bullshit.
- miltondts 5y ago
  Did you take into account the warming of the oceans? They have 3 orders of magnitude more mass than air (1.37 × 10^21 kg vs 5.1480×10^18 kg), and take much more energy to heat per mass.
  - midjji 5y ago
    I disregarded that 99% of the earth is melted i.e. not in yet in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. Mostly because it does not matter. This is showing how large the greenhouse effect really is, about 74 degrees. That is how much heat the earth "traps", and while its getting warmer, its getting a degree or two warmer, not slowly ramping up from 4C to 78C. My point is more one of technical correctness. People keep thinking that the greenhouse effect is something new and strange, but without it the earth would be a snowball regardless of the about 0.5% increase we have affected so far, or the predicted 1% increase we will get in 30 years at current development. When people are saying the greenhouse effect has suddenly increased temperature by 1C they make people go what, that sounds strange and huge? if you say, the sum total of human activity in the world has had an 0.5% effect on the critical 74C atmosphere greenhouse property people generally go really, not more? The bad framing caused by shitty incorrect titles like the one linked is making the problem worse. Politicians arent saying our atmospheric impact on the greenhouse effect is insignificant so far, they are outright denying that the greenhouse effect exists. And they get away with it because of bad framing.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Headline is ambiguous but TFA is not. That 4C temperature is the long-term equilibrium. The word "trapped" in the headline means the amount of additional energy that goes to alter that equilibrium. It's not measuring the total greenhouse effect. It's measuring the additional greenhouse effect. Or rather, all of the total factors contributing to warming, which includes things like more blue ocean rather than bright ice. As you note, the existing greenhouse effect is really quite large, and the additional ~200 ppm of carbon dioxide is relatively small. It leads to a change of about 1C so far, and perhaps a total of 3-4C over the next century. But those changes are significant when it comes to human society, both directly because of the temperature and indirectly due to an increase in extreme events.
euroderf 5y ago
We will look back at this summer is still kinda blissfully coolish.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ppf 5y ago
If you can "feel" climate change happening, then we have left the realm of science and entered the world of spiritual emotionalism. It sounds a lot like Evangelical Christians who can "feel" the Holy Spirit entering them, etc.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  You're right. Anecdotal data points and gut feelings aren't as useful as regular measurement. Incidentally, the article specifically mentions a series of measurements, indicating that there is indeed a climate change going on, and while it also mentions short-term natural changes as a contributing factor, it also mentions that the scientist responsible for the study believe human factors are a large part of it.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
So here's the plan: Get nuclear fusion working or use fission, small enough to put on a large ocean ship. Sail these ships out to sea, spraying sea water high up into the atmosphere. (Hoses lifted up by balloons). .... Profit.
e2e8 5y ago
Abstract Earth's Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a relatively small (presently ∼0.3%) difference between global mean solar radiation absorbed and thermal infrared radiation emitted to space. EEI is set by natural and anthropogenic climate forcings and the climate system's response to those forcings. It is also influenced by internal variations within the climate system. Most of EEI warms the ocean; the remainder heats the land, melts ice, and warms the atmosphere. We show that independent satellite and in situ observations each yield statistically indistinguishable decadal increases in EEI from mid-2005 to mid-2019 of 0.50±0.47 W m-2 decade-1 (5%-95% confidence interval). This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor. These changes combined exceed a positive trend in OLR due to increasing global mean temperatures. [0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL093047 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL09...
nickd2001 5y ago
Seems to me our only hope now is some very radical immediately effective carbon capture tech, that is cheap and people are happy to do it - whatever "IT" is. Planting trees is great but to my mind that isn't going to be enough, doesn't happen quickly enough. Without this, it seems there will be weather disasters and food shortages all over the world and accompanying wars and political destabilisation that leaves few places unscathed. I think frankly the most important subject any scientists should study right now is how to get this huge amount of humanity=threatening previously emitted CO2 out of the atmosphere
- me_me_me 5y ago
  We can run budgets to do it. We are wasting money on armies already. That alone could be a great start, but... u know... humans. We should be converting cities into greener spots to reduce ambient heat, and start switching to hydro-phonic farming within the cities. These are not future techs we already have them. No one need new fighter jets, when you have nukes. So why drown money into 'new jet research'?
  - nickd2001 5y ago
    Well, somebody somewhere makes money out of pointless new jets etc. I think that vested interests control such a lot, its hard to get people to cooperate on things etc, that if we could come up with some carbon capture which side-steps those problems, it'd be good. E:g some cheap device people could have in their home or garden that removes CO2, that enough concerned folks bought and operated that it made a difference, even whilst their neighbours denied any link to fossil fuels. Or some way of converting CO2 into something of commercial value, maybe a construction material? Apparently there's already some kind of rock salt thing you can put on fields that helps crops as well as takes out CO2, dunno how much of a contribution that can make. The fact that some US states dominated by oil industry, have built a load of wind and solar farms because its cheaper, gives me hope that the right product could gain mass acceptance. Can we look at excessive CO2 in the atmosphere as a raw material for making something else useful? I'm not a chemist though. :(
    - 5y ago

58 points by ijidak 5y ago

Can someone confirm? Is the science behind this accurate? If true, this seems more meaningful than telling us CO2 levels...

jfengel 5y ago
Yes, it's accurate. It's just repeating the same thing you've been told for decades, in different terms. It's a different calculation for the same temperature and radiation data they were already gathering. They haven't just been telling you the CO2 levels. They've also been telling you the temperature, which are around .5C/1F over the long-term average. Increasing temperature and increasing energy imbalance are one and the same thing. Trap more energy, get more temperature: it's the same Q=(delta T)mc you learned in high school chemistry. It's just that we know that increasing CO2 is the reason for it, and it's the thing we can do something about.

beprogrammed 5y ago

Sure feels like it outside

themodelplumber 5y ago

Strange not to have heard of this before, but it seems like it could be a really helpful metric. It's unfortunate that the data doesn't go back terribly far though. It's nice to be able to look at a trend on one time scale, but without longer periods mapped for additional context it's difficult to know if the current trend is a local maximum on a wider scale. Correct me if I'm thinking about this wrong...

jfengel 5y ago
Temperature is a good proxy for energy imbalance. Temperature changes to push the energy imbalance back towards zero. That's something easily demonstrated in a laboratory; it's basic physics. We've got plenty of long-term temperature charts, calculated in a variety of different ways. Wikipedia seems as good a place to start as any: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record This metric isn't really new. It's just becoming public because somebody's hoping that a new way to look at the same information might finally click with somebody. There hasn't really been anything new for decades about climate change, except the long steady drumbeat of data confirming the predictions. Which is no surprise: the basic physics and chemistry of climate change is really quite straightforward and well understood.

aurizon 5y ago

CO2 is one metric, CH4(methane) is another. This net heat absorbency is a third, humidity is a fourth - all these metrics sum to give the net earth heating. This one had (apparently) been neglected or not properly accounted for. Is this a true error or data burying? In any event, entrapment of twice as much heat over a time span of 16 years is concerning. If we get another doubling over the next 16 years - how will this affect warming patterns? Weather? The north american drought? The North african drought?

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
Is there any stats on the contribution of (shipping industry) bunker fuel, SO2 emissions
- aurizon 5y ago
  Global bunker C fuel use is dealt with here. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/bunker-fuel https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sci... It is a large factor due to high sulfur 27,000 ppm

revscat 5y ago

I used to think I would die of old age before the worst of climate change hit, leaving it to my children to deal with. I’m not so sure any longer. Regardless, I have little faith that a species which values money and reproduction so highly will be able to affect the changes needed to stave off apocalypse.

AltonWells 5y ago

It’s become abundantly apparent over the past few years that climate change is striking right now. Unfortunately it’s still in 1st gear and we are far from yet close to some truly horrendous changes in earths equilibrium. In college (4-5 years ago) I often tried to explain to friends how much energy was required to add a single degree in average temperature to the worlds oceans (it’s a fuck ton) and we’re well past that point. I’m genuinely convinced this will lead to an extinction level event where we either make it through radically changed or society as a whole catastrophically fails.

peytn 5y ago
Checking the paper, if we’re talking the past few years, it looks like this oscillation could be a big factor: > An unusually intense PDO phase that began in about 2014 caused a reduction in cloud formation above the ocean, which also resulted in the increased absorption of incoming energy by the planet, the scientists said.
- AltonWells 5y ago
  That’s one of the scariest potentials of higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Maybe it’s just a phase now but a significant reduction in clouds is actually a predicted outcome from increased heating. It’s really not looking great.
ppf 5y ago
There's an astronomical difference between the surface temperature and the temperature of the entire ocean rising by one degree.
- lasc4r 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you under the impression that ocean temps haven't gone up by 1c since industrialization? Because they have.
  - ppf 5y ago

fogihujy 5y ago

So... Are we screwed?

__warlord__ 5y ago
Most probably... yes
midjji 5y ago
Nah, reading the ipcc reports and predictions, the worst case is a bunch of poor people in poor countries will suffer, and a refugee crisis on the scale of 100-300M will happen, which in turn will trigger wars and diseases that actually kill people. Syria being a good example of what this looks like as it already happened there (exactly as predicted by the ipc almost a decade earlier btw), and according to them, pakistan is next. As for the rich countries, there will be significant infrastructure costs, a nasty realization about border control, but most will be fine. Even countries like the netherlands that are at exceptional risk solved a problem like this in the 15th century. If by screwed you mean 2% of the population dying due to climate change, and roughly the same amount of total infrastructure damage then sure, were screwed, but its not a civilizational threat. Not to say it isnt bad, the loss of biosphere and the unique and irreplaceable information it contains is an absolute tragedy.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  If you are part of that 2%, then yes, you are screwed. If you are reading this, though, you probably aren't part of that 2%. The rich will be fine, the poor will get fucked directly as a result of the actions of the rich. Same as it ever was.

alexchamberlain 5y ago

I read the headline as the amount of energy radiated has halved, but from the article I think it's the difference between what is absorbed and what has been radiated has doubled? I don't want to take away from the shocking findings, but I like to understand what the actual numbers mean.

midjji 5y ago

So a basic computation of the total greenhouse effect using a blackbody assumption and an albedo of 0.7, that of stone and water, shows that the atmosphere i.e. the greenhouse effect lifts the temperature of the earth from -70C to 4C. Details can be changed about a bit, but the size of the earth and the temperature of the sun, and their distance are pretty damned exact. Minor sources like residual heat, radiological warming and lunar gravity stirring are too small and can be ignored. So if it had been doubled it would have increased to 78 C, which is obvious bullshit.

miltondts 5y ago
Did you take into account the warming of the oceans? They have 3 orders of magnitude more mass than air (1.37 × 10^21 kg vs 5.1480×10^18 kg), and take much more energy to heat per mass.
- midjji 5y ago
  I disregarded that 99% of the earth is melted i.e. not in yet in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings. Mostly because it does not matter. This is showing how large the greenhouse effect really is, about 74 degrees. That is how much heat the earth "traps", and while its getting warmer, its getting a degree or two warmer, not slowly ramping up from 4C to 78C. My point is more one of technical correctness. People keep thinking that the greenhouse effect is something new and strange, but without it the earth would be a snowball regardless of the about 0.5% increase we have affected so far, or the predicted 1% increase we will get in 30 years at current development. When people are saying the greenhouse effect has suddenly increased temperature by 1C they make people go what, that sounds strange and huge? if you say, the sum total of human activity in the world has had an 0.5% effect on the critical 74C atmosphere greenhouse property people generally go really, not more? The bad framing caused by shitty incorrect titles like the one linked is making the problem worse. Politicians arent saying our atmospheric impact on the greenhouse effect is insignificant so far, they are outright denying that the greenhouse effect exists. And they get away with it because of bad framing.
jfengel 5y ago
Headline is ambiguous but TFA is not. That 4C temperature is the long-term equilibrium. The word "trapped" in the headline means the amount of additional energy that goes to alter that equilibrium. It's not measuring the total greenhouse effect. It's measuring the additional greenhouse effect. Or rather, all of the total factors contributing to warming, which includes things like more blue ocean rather than bright ice. As you note, the existing greenhouse effect is really quite large, and the additional ~200 ppm of carbon dioxide is relatively small. It leads to a change of about 1C so far, and perhaps a total of 3-4C over the next century. But those changes are significant when it comes to human society, both directly because of the temperature and indirectly due to an increase in extreme events.

euroderf 5y ago

We will look back at this summer is still kinda blissfully coolish.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ppf 5y ago

If you can "feel" climate change happening, then we have left the realm of science and entered the world of spiritual emotionalism. It sounds a lot like Evangelical Christians who can "feel" the Holy Spirit entering them, etc.

fogihujy 5y ago
You're right. Anecdotal data points and gut feelings aren't as useful as regular measurement. Incidentally, the article specifically mentions a series of measurements, indicating that there is indeed a climate change going on, and while it also mentions short-term natural changes as a contributing factor, it also mentions that the scientist responsible for the study believe human factors are a large part of it.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

So here's the plan: Get nuclear fusion working or use fission, small enough to put on a large ocean ship. Sail these ships out to sea, spraying sea water high up into the atmosphere. (Hoses lifted up by balloons). .... Profit.

e2e8 5y ago

Abstract Earth's Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a relatively small (presently ∼0.3%) difference between global mean solar radiation absorbed and thermal infrared radiation emitted to space. EEI is set by natural and anthropogenic climate forcings and the climate system's response to those forcings. It is also influenced by internal variations within the climate system. Most of EEI warms the ocean; the remainder heats the land, melts ice, and warms the atmosphere. We show that independent satellite and in situ observations each yield statistically indistinguishable decadal increases in EEI from mid-2005 to mid-2019 of 0.50±0.47 W m-2 decade-1 (5%-95% confidence interval). This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor. These changes combined exceed a positive trend in OLR due to increasing global mean temperatures. [0] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL093047 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL09...

nickd2001 5y ago

Seems to me our only hope now is some very radical immediately effective carbon capture tech, that is cheap and people are happy to do it - whatever "IT" is. Planting trees is great but to my mind that isn't going to be enough, doesn't happen quickly enough. Without this, it seems there will be weather disasters and food shortages all over the world and accompanying wars and political destabilisation that leaves few places unscathed. I think frankly the most important subject any scientists should study right now is how to get this huge amount of humanity=threatening previously emitted CO2 out of the atmosphere

me_me_me 5y ago
We can run budgets to do it. We are wasting money on armies already. That alone could be a great start, but... u know... humans. We should be converting cities into greener spots to reduce ambient heat, and start switching to hydro-phonic farming within the cities. These are not future techs we already have them. No one need new fighter jets, when you have nukes. So why drown money into 'new jet research'?
- nickd2001 5y ago
  Well, somebody somewhere makes money out of pointless new jets etc. I think that vested interests control such a lot, its hard to get people to cooperate on things etc, that if we could come up with some carbon capture which side-steps those problems, it'd be good. E:g some cheap device people could have in their home or garden that removes CO2, that enough concerned folks bought and operated that it made a difference, even whilst their neighbours denied any link to fossil fuels. Or some way of converting CO2 into something of commercial value, maybe a construction material? Apparently there's already some kind of rock salt thing you can put on fields that helps crops as well as takes out CO2, dunno how much of a contribution that can make. The fact that some US states dominated by oil industry, have built a load of wind and solar farms because its cheaper, gives me hope that the right product could gain mass acceptance. Can we look at excessive CO2 in the atmosphere as a raw material for making something else useful? I'm not a chemist though. :(
  - 5y ago