Earth’s energy imbalance removes almost all suspicions from anthropogenic climate change

[ad_1]

For decades, the Earth’s energy system has become unmanageable.

The stability of the Earth’s climate depends on the delicate balance between the amount of energy a planet absorbs from the Sun and the amount of energy the Earth releases into space. However, that equilibrium has been resolved in recent years, and the imbalance is widening, according to a paper published Wednesday. Journal Nature Communications..

Changes in the Earth’s energy system will have a major impact on our understanding of the Earth’s future climate and human climate change. Researchers at Princeton University behind the treatise found that the probability of change occurring naturally was less than 1 percent.

Findings undermine an important argument used by people who do not believe that human activity is responsible for most of climate change to explain trends in global warming, and the Earth’s energy imbalances make the Earth an imbalance. There is no doubt that it can be explained by its own natural changes.

The study also provides important insights into how greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic consequences of climate change disrupt global warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather events. To provide.

Shiv Priyam Raghuraman, a graduate student in Atmosphere and Oceanology in Princeton and the lead author of the study, said: “The surplus manifests itself as a variety of symptoms.”

Carbon dioxide emissions, methane Other greenhouse gases from human activity trap heat in the atmosphere. That is, planets normally absorb the infrared rays emitted into space. Melting sea ice, changing cloud cover, and different concentrations of small atmospheric particles called aerosols (all of which are affected by climate change) also mean that the Earth reflects less of the sun’s radiation into space. increase.

“There is no such equilibrium between the energy coming in and out of the sun,” Raghuraman said. “Is the question a change in these natural planets, or are we?”

Researchers have used satellite observations from 2001 to 2020 to confirm that the Earth’s energy imbalance is widening. We then used a set of climate models to simulate the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the Earth’s energy system if it were excluded from the equation.

Scientists have found that natural changes alone cannot explain the trends observed over the last two decades.

“It was almost impossible that such a large increase in imbalances was due to the vibrations and fluctuations of the Earth itself — a probability of less than 1 percent —” Raghuraman said.

Although the study focused on causes and consequences, Raghuraman said the findings had significant social and policy implications.

The ocean stores about 90% of the planet’s excess heat, which can cause sea level rise, hurricane formation and other extreme weather events. The remaining heat is absorbed by the atmosphere and land, raising the surface temperature of the earth and contributing to the melting of snow and ice.

As the Earth’s energy imbalance continues to grow, the results already felt today are likely to be exacerbated, said Norman Robe, a physical scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

“Temperatures will rise, sea levels will rise, and more snow and ice will melt,” Loeb said. “Everything you see in the news— Forest fire, Drought — When heat is applied, the drought gets worse. “

Loeb, who led a joint study between NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that the Earth’s energy imbalances nearly doubled between 2005 and 2019.This treatise was last month Journal Geophysics Research Letter..

According to Loeb, Princeton University’s work confirms what was outlined in his own work using 14 years of observations from satellite sensors and a series of ocean instruments. He added that while human activity, or what is known as artificial coercion, is undoubtedly effective, some natural changes are likely to be at work as well. For example, the vibrations of some planets can operate in cycles that last for decades, making it difficult to get fingerprints of climate change.

“Although there is certainly artificial coercion, the ocean is a major player in climate and operates on a much slower time scale. Ideally, it would be possible to make these types of measurements for over 50 years. I want to. “

[ad_2]