Climate Letter #1332

A primer on Earth’s energy budget (Forbes).  This slick presentation of a basic fundamental of climate science was prepared by an astrophysicist with the intent of keeping it simple but reasonably complete, and I recommend it for everyone to study.  Once you get interested and have questions you can do a basic search of the subject and find dozens of other explanations that may have slightly different numbers and will go as far as you want into spelling out more details.  Note that the amount of energy absorbed by the surface itself that is produced by the greenhouse effect is more than double the amount collected from sunlight, which gives the gases a great deal of leverage as the grow.  Sunlight absorption is leveraged at times, in this case mostly by changes in albedo, where the norm of about 31% can find all sorts of ways to go up or down a point or two.  Adding just one watt per square meter to the surface collection is expected to result over time in a gain of three-quarters of a degree to surface air temperature as an effect of outbound re-radiation.

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The chart from NASA in the story above shows a current ongoing imbalance of 0.6 watt per square meter on average for the whole Earth surface.  That is a critical number because it represents a lag in re-radiation, one that that is almost entirely due to the way energy is processed at ocean surfaces when captured.  A meaningful amount is caught by circulating water action and carried downward, where it heats the cool waters below the surface, some of it extending all the way to the bottom of the sea.  There is no similar activity on land surfaces, where practically all of the heat is quickly re-radiated upward into the atmosphere.  That difference explains why air temperatures over land are rising more rapidly than the air above ocean surfaces.  Once ocean waters below the surface become thoroughly saturated with added heat that will no longer happen, and the 0.6 imbalance will have disappeared along with a catching up of air temperatures above the ocean surface.  The 0.6 figure is an estimate, which other sources believe to be a bit low, but still enough to suggest that another half degree of air temperature increase is in the pipeline waiting for further warming of deep ocean waters.to be completed.
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This is a good time to bring up an interactive map of heating records for every point (64,800) on the Earth surface, for those who have not seen it.  Give it time to load, read the materials below about what the numbers mean, and then start exploring.  The records for most places begin in 1850.  Wherever you look, you can see that records of temperature increases over land will easily outpace those above the oceans, even when the pixels are side by side.  Pixels straddling the divided type of coastlines are always intermediate.
–I believe that whenever we stop increasing greenhouse energy the temperature increases of air over land will also stop rising, while increases over the oceans will continue until the imbalance phenomenon described above is eliminated and their average increase finally matches that expressed over land.
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The polar vortex may be ready to split into three pieces (Axios).  Events of this type are becoming more common as the Arctic warms, resulting in severe winter weather conditions in places farther south.
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New poll numbers from NBC News show solid increases in the percentage of Americans who see an urgent need for climate action (Esquire).  There is still a huge partisan divide, but severe weather events are having a noticeable effect overall.
Carl

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