As climate change intensifies daily and good news is scarce, recent satellite data brings a hopeful note: the total heat energy gained by the planet has significantly decreased from the record high reached in early 2023. This comes as a welcome surprise, as this year is on course to be the hottest on record, with an average global surface temperature more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
After observing a significant increase in heat gain, there were initial concerns about climate models underestimating the rate of global warming . However, the subsequent decline in heat gain indicates that those concerns may not be as valid. Ben Snaderson at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, said that the new numbers are indicative that there is nothing ‘dramatically’ wrong with the current model.
The latest satellite data was posted on Bluesky by Gavin Schmidt at NASA . He captioned it, “It doesn’t support a doomist narrative.” He further said that there is a huge difference between tracking the overall change in climate change and habitat loss, and accepting the fact that everything is spiraling out of control and we’ve lost our sense of agency.
The climate change studies that report on the alteration in the global temperatures only measure the air a couple of meters above the land or sea. But the layer of air that we are surrounded with is just a small part of the massive climate system- which also includes the entire atmosphere and oceans.
To measure the changes in the entire climate system, the scientists track how much sunlight enters the atmosphere and how much of it leaves. When sunlight enters the atmosphere, some of it gets emitted immediately by clouds or ice, and the remaining that stays is absorbed and is later released as heat energy. If the same amount of energy enters and exits the atmosphere, then there is no increase in the overall temperatures.
Today with the increase in greenhouse gasses, the sunlight that enters is trapped in the atmosphere due to these gases. This has resulted in the planet gaining more heat in years than it loses to space. This is known as Earth’s energy imbalance , and NASA’s project called CREES monitors and measures this imbalance regularly. As per reports, since the average energy imbalance has more than doubled.
However the energy imbalance is not shielded, it is affected by other factors too, like the 2023 spike is being seen as the consequence of a rare “triple-dip” La Niña that continued for three winters. It was suggested that had that spike continued, it would have appeared that something was happening in the real world that was not being captured by any of the models. However, as it actually turned out, the spike was short-lived, and comparable spikes are seen in the model data as well.
After observing a significant increase in heat gain, there were initial concerns about climate models underestimating the rate of global warming . However, the subsequent decline in heat gain indicates that those concerns may not be as valid. Ben Snaderson at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, said that the new numbers are indicative that there is nothing ‘dramatically’ wrong with the current model.
The latest satellite data was posted on Bluesky by Gavin Schmidt at NASA . He captioned it, “It doesn’t support a doomist narrative.” He further said that there is a huge difference between tracking the overall change in climate change and habitat loss, and accepting the fact that everything is spiraling out of control and we’ve lost our sense of agency.
The climate change studies that report on the alteration in the global temperatures only measure the air a couple of meters above the land or sea. But the layer of air that we are surrounded with is just a small part of the massive climate system- which also includes the entire atmosphere and oceans.
To measure the changes in the entire climate system, the scientists track how much sunlight enters the atmosphere and how much of it leaves. When sunlight enters the atmosphere, some of it gets emitted immediately by clouds or ice, and the remaining that stays is absorbed and is later released as heat energy. If the same amount of energy enters and exits the atmosphere, then there is no increase in the overall temperatures.
Today with the increase in greenhouse gasses, the sunlight that enters is trapped in the atmosphere due to these gases. This has resulted in the planet gaining more heat in years than it loses to space. This is known as Earth’s energy imbalance , and NASA’s project called CREES monitors and measures this imbalance regularly. As per reports, since the average energy imbalance has more than doubled.
However the energy imbalance is not shielded, it is affected by other factors too, like the 2023 spike is being seen as the consequence of a rare “triple-dip” La Niña that continued for three winters. It was suggested that had that spike continued, it would have appeared that something was happening in the real world that was not being captured by any of the models. However, as it actually turned out, the spike was short-lived, and comparable spikes are seen in the model data as well.
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