Earth Began Absorbing More Sunlight in 2023, Climate Researchers Find (arstechnica.com) 56
Today a group of German scientists presented data suggesting Earth is absorbing more sunlight than in the past, reports Ars Technica, "largely due to reduced cloud cover."
We can measure both the amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun and how much energy it radiates back into space.... The new paper finds that the energy imbalance set a new high in 2023, with a record amount of energy being absorbed by the ocean/atmosphere system. This wasn't accompanied by a drop in infrared emissions from the Earth, suggesting it wasn't due to greenhouse gases, which trap heat by absorbing this radiation. Instead, it seems to be due to decreased reflection of incoming sunlight by the Earth....
Using two different data sets, the teams identify the areas most effected by this, and they're not at the poles, indicating loss of snow and ice are unlikely to be the cause. Instead, the key contributor appears to be the loss of low-level clouds [particularly over the Atlantic ocean]... The drop in low-level clouds had been averaging about 1.3 percent per decade. 2023 saw a slightly larger drop occur in just one year....
So, what could be causing the clouds to go away? The researchers list three potential factors. One is simply the variability of the climate system, meaning 2023 might have just been an extremely unusual year, and things will revert to trends in the ensuing years. The second is the impact of aerosols, which both we and natural processes emit in copious quantities. These can help seed clouds, so a reduction of aerosols (driven by things like pollution control measures) could potentially account for this effect. The most concerning potential explanation, however, is that there may be a feedback relationship between rising temperatures and low-level clouds. Meaning that, as the Earth warms, the clouds become sparse, enhancing the warming further. That would be bad news for our future climate, because it suggests that the lower range of warming estimates would have to be adjusted upward to account for it.
If the decline in reflectivity wasn't just caused by normal variability, the researchers warn, "the 2023 extra heat may be here to stay..."
Using two different data sets, the teams identify the areas most effected by this, and they're not at the poles, indicating loss of snow and ice are unlikely to be the cause. Instead, the key contributor appears to be the loss of low-level clouds [particularly over the Atlantic ocean]... The drop in low-level clouds had been averaging about 1.3 percent per decade. 2023 saw a slightly larger drop occur in just one year....
So, what could be causing the clouds to go away? The researchers list three potential factors. One is simply the variability of the climate system, meaning 2023 might have just been an extremely unusual year, and things will revert to trends in the ensuing years. The second is the impact of aerosols, which both we and natural processes emit in copious quantities. These can help seed clouds, so a reduction of aerosols (driven by things like pollution control measures) could potentially account for this effect. The most concerning potential explanation, however, is that there may be a feedback relationship between rising temperatures and low-level clouds. Meaning that, as the Earth warms, the clouds become sparse, enhancing the warming further. That would be bad news for our future climate, because it suggests that the lower range of warming estimates would have to be adjusted upward to account for it.
If the decline in reflectivity wasn't just caused by normal variability, the researchers warn, "the 2023 extra heat may be here to stay..."
Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise that the higher temperatures are not a fad, but here to stay.
The $64,000.00 question is whether nature's demon spawn or greatest achievement is to blame. I struggle to delineate the problem as either natural or anthropogenic, since I lack the hubris to believe mankind is separate from nature instead of part of it.
Maybe the Earth thinks it has the flu, and is defending itself from a virus by inducing a fever.
Re:Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably likely on the order of tomorrow's sunrise that the higher temperatures are not a fad, but here to stay.
You should improve your statistics skill.
The amount of anthropomorphizing in the your post is ridiculous. Nature doesn't want anything. It's a bunch of natural processes that can be predicted using math. The Earth doesn't "think" it has a flu.
Ghosts want things. Kids want things. Deer want things. Natural processes follow natural laws.
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Nature doesn't want anything. It's a bunch of natural processes that can be predicted using math.
That is your religious belief. Others may not be so sure. And still others know conclusively that you are wrong.
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That is your religious belief.
Wrong.
As discussed by many, we can utterly destroy this delusional species of ape and whatever religious idiocy arises thereafter will be fundamentally different from what exists today.
The scientific method, however, will re-codify everything we know at present with the exact same precision, using the exact same evidence.
Be a better human.
Re: Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:2)
That is your religious belief. Others may not be so sure. And still others know conclusively that you are wrong.
You believe inanate things like the Sun "wants" to keep the planets in orbit? That is just plain wrong.
The Sun keeps the planets in orbit because of its mass. That's how gravity works.
The Sun is unable to "choose" anything else. With such choice would come options, like tomorrow the Sun would decide not to want the planets in order and let them fly off in a straight line or even pull them in.
Stuff doesn't work like that. At all. Regardless of your belief
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Re:Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:5, Informative)
Na, we predicted a bunch of stuff that came true.
Re:Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:5, Informative)
Every prediction we've made so far has turned out to be wrong,
Turns out the predictions have been right on the Mark. Here's the earliest greenhouse effect model's prediction, compared to reality: l https://climategraphs.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
as more and more unaccounted for processes are discovered. Like this one.
This one is a correction amounting to about 10% warming. Not a major effect, and well within the quoted error bars in the models. .
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Re: Mankind, or maybe not so kind... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I would hardly call the side effects unintentional. I always get annoyed when results that were obvious would happen and that many, many people warned would happen, and then people just call it "unintended consequences". If it's an obvious and predictable consequence that has been warned about, then how can it be unintended? If the people behind it wished really hard, or just hoped no-one would notice?
The simple and obvious fact is that we need sunlight. Unless you count life in hydrothermal vents or the mi
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Arrrgh. Sorry. That reply was not meant for you. I'm using a laptop I'm not used to and the touchpad keeps getting brushed by my palm as I try to type and it does crazy things. I actually opened this post on another comment. Please ignore it here. I think my palm actually managed to select all and drag?
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I struggle to delineate the problem as either natural or anthropogenic, since I lack the hubris to believe mankind is separate from nature instead of part of it.
To me they are one and the same. All our technology isn't unnatural or artificial. It is the natural process of a species who had previously evolved highly complex means of vocalization and communication. This changed our brains to be able to think abstractly. The ability led to things like writing, humor, math, science and art. Even our feats like the Moon landing are natural in my book. Those are natural artifacts of the Maximum Power Principle in our search for more energy and resources. We are bo
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I assume that you meant "you hope that an intelligent species someday will exist that can consume less power, transform less energy and still prevail against species that can do more".
A species, system, culture cannot "violate" the maximum power principle in that way. When it would face with a species or culture or system that takes in MORE power, transform MORE energy, produce MORE or MORE efficiently to sustain and procreate itself. And that species, culture or system will prevail over them.
Reproduction i
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Pollution can be good? (Score:4, Interesting)
"So, what could be causing the clouds to go away?
This is always well established. Unintended consequences. Cleaning up diesel engines in ships has decreased SO2 emissions, in turn reducing low lying clouds in maritime shipping lanes.
https://news.mongabay.com/2024... [mongabay.com].
I think I also read this in a Tier 1 journal, don't remember which.
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Well yeah, that's been one of the ideas proposed as a form of geoengineering. Intentionally spew a bunch of aerosols into the atmosphere, clouds form, and the clouds reflect some of the sunshine back into space.
Of course, there's also the potential for some unintentional side effects, since the heat-blocking effect of clouds works both ways. At night, clouds reflect radiated heat back towards the Earth, so making more clouds isn't necessarily a planet-cooling win.
Re: Pollution can be good? (Score:2)
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I think I also read this in a Tier 1 journal, don't remember which.
Probably Soylent News.
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I don't think they're claiming that they discovered the reduced aerosol effect; they're referring that to as a known factor in decreasing Earth's albedo which no doubt contributed to an outlier year.
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Note: I accidentally managed to post this reply to the wrong comment first. So now I am reposting it.
I would hardly call the side effects unintentional. I always get annoyed when results that were obvious would happen and that many, many people warned would happen, and then people just call it "unintended consequences". If it's an obvious and predictable consequence that has been warned about, then how can it be unintended? If the people behind it wished really hard, or just hoped no-one would notice?
The si
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Oh sweet zombie baby Jesus!. It happened again. The above reply was supposed to be to Powercntrl below. I'm not going to post it again. Just ignore it. Sorry. I am trying to figure out how this happens. I am 90% sure it is from my unfamiliarity with this laptop with my palm constantly brushing the keypad. I keep having problems typing where the mouse cursor jumps wildly, the touchpad registers clicks, and suddenly a section of text has been highlighted and overwritten by what I'm typing. It has happened alr
Absorbed, not absorbing (Score:2)
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I'd guess that the earth will absorb more sunshine in 2024 than it did in 2023.
By about .27 of a percent.
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I'd guess that the earth will absorb more sunshine in 2024 than it did in 2023.
By about .27 of a percent.
not to worry it will be back to standard in 2025, for a few years anyway...
Kelvin, really ? (Score:2)
add up to, at most, 0.1 Kelvin of warming
Kelvin, really ? What is the author trying to point out ? 0.1 Kelvin is the same as 0.1 C. Maybe I will start using Rankine so people can think I know things :)
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Might as well complain they didn't use Fahrenheit...
-We are all pedantic here.
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Kelvin, really ? What is the author trying to point out ?
In calculations involving radiative heat transfer (like, say, the greenhouse effect), all the temperatures have to be absolute because that's what the Stefan-Boltzmann law requires.
Basically, you're complaining that the popular articles didn't bother to relabel the units back to Celsius to make it simpler to understand for non-scientists.
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I am glad the Sun is as constant as an atomic clock! It's not as constant as an atomic clock, but its output is measured- in fact that was the very first link in the summary. The variations in solar output are about 0.1 percent [ref] [nationalacademies.org]].
Renowned climatologists approved by MSNBC have assured me that the Sun can't possibly emit more and that they know for sure about it.
I don't know about MSNBC, but, yes, we do know, because we measure it.
Anybody disputing that fact is obviously a climate troll.
Or gets their information from climate trolls.
Ironically Mole People (Score:3)
Ironically, as the human race turns into mole people over time due to the scorching atmosphere, the deeper they dig, the more free energy there is.
--
I have a mole in my eye, which is a very specific thing. - Susan Kelechi Watson
Are we not lucky. (Score:2)
Climate "sceptics" always assures us that the nonlinear response of the planet to heat changes is so badly understood that we should not neglect the chance that the pendulum swings in the right direction.
Now ... uuups.
How much of the Greenhouse effect ... (Score:2)
... is due to greenhouses?
I remember flying over Spain once and thinking "that's a strange looking lake", before realizing I was looking at a field of polytunnel greenhouses stretching as far as I could see (from a jet plane).
Greenhouses are, duh, designed to retain heat. It doesn't turn into food or compost, so how many Calories or KWh does an acre of greenhouse capture?
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Errm, ... this isn't news.(?) (Score:2)
Climate change - and, yes, it's man-made - has the planets albedo sinking for quite some time now. Obviously. Ice-caps melt, less reflection, more heat absorption, yet another cascading effect of quite a few we have already. I thought this already has been well established, no? What's the big deal here? We have this confirmed for recent years? ... Well, no shit, Sherlock, I'd say. ... Or am I missing some detail here? What _is_ the news then?
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Oh look. It's one of the "I'm just asking questions!" crowd.
Always amazes me how, in place of resolving to correct personal ignorance, we instead opt to rush out and "just ask questions" to "spark debate".
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When they publish these articles they should included which assumptions were made. The assumptions define the results!
Just for reference, did you read the article?
(not the summary. Not the Ars Technical popular-science article. The actual scientific paper we're discussing, which was linked [science.org] above.)
There's no point in guessing about assumptions you think were not in the text of the article if you didn't actually read the article.
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Am I the only one here that believes it is impossible to measure "... the amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun and how much energy it radiates back into space...." Think about it, how do they measure it, they would have to make some assumptions which as always would control the results.
Am I the only one here who is annoyed that people posting didn't bother to click the link in the summary [sciencedirect.com] that discusses these satellite measurements?
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Not one of these is complete without the alternate-truth brigade slithering out of their various burrows and spraying urine everywhere....
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It's a shame that scientists aren't the virtuous people we were taught as kids. The last four years cemented that sad fact.
If you read many books by scientists of any persuasion that aren't aimed directly at journaling progress, you end up learning that a *LOT* of their progress is "steered" by monetary value. Add in the fact that there's always a massive undercurrent of "this is how it's always been" that takes a *MASSIVE* pile of evidence to even begin to penetrate, and you end up coming to the conclusion that science is just as corrupt as every other aspect of humanity. We've focused most of our energy on profit seeking, and
Re: Solar Maximum (Score:2)
Don't forget... (Score:2)
Hadley cell disruption (Score:2)
mystery (Score:2)
No one knows. Warming of the oceans should put more water into the air, which should result in more cloud cover. It'll be quite an irony if reducing air pollution leads to increased global warming.