NASA/NOAA - Earth Now Traps Unprecedented Amount Of Heat; Imbalance Nearly Doubled 2005-2019

[hatrack]

The amount of heat Earth traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land, according to new research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented,” said Norman Loeb, a NASA scientist and lead author of the study, which was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The Earth is warming faster than expected.”

Using satellite data, researchers measured what is known as Earth’s energy imbalance – the difference between how much energy the planet absorbs from the sun, and how much it’s able to shed, or radiate back out into space. When there is a positive imbalance – Earth absorbing more heat than it is losing – it is a first step toward global warming, said Stuart Evans, a climate scientist at the University at Buffalo. “It’s a sign the Earth is gaining energy.”

That imbalance roughly doubled between 2005 and 2019, the study found. “It is a massive amount of energy,” said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and co-author of the study. Johnson said the energy increase is equivalent to every person on Earth using 20 electric tea kettles at once. “It’s such a hard number to get your mind around.”

The Earth takes in about 240 watts per square meter of energy from the sun. At the beginning of the study period, in 2005, it was radiating back out about 239.5 of those watts – creating a positive imbalance of about half a watt. By the end, in 2019, that gap had nearly doubled to about 1 full watt per square meter.

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https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-earth-is-now-trapping-an-unprecedented-amount-of-heat-nasa-says/

[Lovie777]

1. Melting of North and South Poles ....

and other regions.

[-misanthroptimist]

2. I don't think very many people know what this means.

Cutting to the chase: It's going to end our civilization -and a lot sooner than most think.

[Random Boomer]

3. Yes, this

Most people don't realize just how fragile civilizations can be. The planet is strewn with the ruins of thousands of civilizations that fell under far less stress than we'll be facing very soon.

[Canoe52]

4. We're so fucked...

[NickB79]

5. We'll be lucky if it doesn't end our species

And about 80% of all other species to boot.

[-misanthroptimist]

6. Actually, I think there's a better than 95% the species survives

We're very clever and have a lot of technological know-how. That should allow some number to survive. My wild-ass guess is that by the 2100 there will be somewhere between 500 million and 2 billion humans on Earth. It's going to be the darkest time in the history of humans since at least Toba.

After that, I can't even guess what happens with even the slightest confidence. Maybe we somehow learn our lesson and pull through this thing, maybe not. We might be relegated to a niche species living in scattered high-tech underground fortresses.

All that said, I can't rule out that we'll off ourselves. The first nuclear war probably will be some or all of Pakistan-India-China over the water sources from the Himalayas. It's entirely possible that that escalates to full-scale nuclear war, where everybody who has them uses them.