According to a study by scientists from NASA and the NOAA in The US, the energy imbalance on Earth increased in 2005 and 2019. The energy balance on Earth, related to Sun’s radiation, is affecting the planet’s temperature.
The amount of solar energy that the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs and the thermal infrared radiation that the planet emits into space is in a delicate balance. A decrease in this equilibrium can cause the Earth to become colder. While a positive shift in the balance can cause the Earth to become warmer. As experts have predicted earlier, the imbalance has doubled in the last 14 years, indicating that the Earth is heating up.
According to the NASA study:
The study, which was published in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters journal looked at data from two separate measurements. The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System, or CERES, is a network of satellite sensors that monitors the amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere.
Aside from that, there is an international initiative known as Argo that keeps track of data from a global network of ocean floats. The Argo data accurately estimate the pace of warming of the oceans. According to the study, the oceans absorb up to 90% of the extra energy produced by an imbalance. This implies that the warming of the Earth caused by the entry and exit of solar radiation should be in sync with the warming of the seas.
Norman Loeb, study lead author and CERES principal investigator at NASA’s Research Center in Virginia, said the data and scale of energy imbalance on Earth determined by CERES and Argo were in “really, very good agreement.” This prompted scientists to assume that the massive imbalance in the Earth’s system, as well as the resulting climate change, is a real reality rather than an “instrumental artifact.”
Human-caused increment in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane have resulted in more heat being trapped within the Earth’s ecosystem rather than fleeing the atmosphere. As a result, the planet’s surface temperature has risen, causing other climatic issues such as the melting of ice caps and glaciers, as well as rising sea levels.
Aside from that, it causes an increase in water vapor and cloud changes, which leads to a further rise in surface temperature. They discovered that the decrease in clouds and sea ice, which caused higher absorption of the Sun’s radiative radiation, contributed to the increase in energy imbalance. Furthermore, anthropogenic forcing, or an increase in greenhouse gases, is combining with an increase in water vapor to trap incoming radiation, adding to these changes.
NOAA data shows that May 2021 is tied with May 2018 as the sixth warmest month ever recorded on the planet. This is a concerning statistic in an already concerning year, which has so far been recognized as the ninth warmest year on record, with a worldwide temperature increase of 0.77 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average.
