NASA: Earth is trapping ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, warming ‘faster than expected’
Catherine Garcia, Night editor

Wed, June 16, 2021, 6:41 PM

Since 2005, the amount of heat trapped by the Earth has roughly doubled,

according to a new study by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers.

This is contributing to warming oceans, air, and land, the scientists write in the study, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented,” NASA scientist and lead author of the study Norman Loeb told The Washington Post. “The Earth is warming faster than expected.”

Using satellite data, the researchers measured the planet’s energy imbalance, which is the difference between how much energy the planet absorbs from the sun and how much is radiated back into space. If there is a positive imbalance, the Earth is absorbing more heat than it is losing; in 2005, there was a positive imbalance of about half a watt per square meter of energy from the sun, and in 2019, the positive imbalance was one watt per square meter, the Post reports.

“It is a massive amount of energy,” NOAA oceanographer Gregory Johnson, a co-author of the study, told the Post, adding that this energy increase is equivalent to everyone on Earth using 20 electric tea kettles at the same time. The team needs to conduct more research to determine the factors behind the increase, but there is evidence that a rise in greenhouse gas emissions and decrease in cloud cover and sea ice could be part of it, as well as cyclical variations in the climate. One thing is certain, Johnson said: “We’re responsible for some of it.”

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Yesterday my attention was drawn to this piece by the Yahoo news service.  This after the day was spent watering newly planted vegetables in a bid to keep them alive under a hot sun, rooted in dry soil.  We are in a severe drought condition in this portion of the Midwest.  In the West and North West conditions are much worse, with record breaking temperatures recorded — summer is yet to come. 

This is an expression of “climate change” or global warming as I prefer to call it.  The first world, that is the affluent societies in the northern hemisphere, have just managed to inoculate a majority of the population, staunching the spread of covid 19.  It bears keeping in mind that the social disruption, the damage of businesses destroyed, jobs lost will take many months to repair.  The loss of over 600,000 in the US alone cannot be undone.  Time and people have been lost.  Covid 19 is an effect of human incursion upon Nature, an animal to human virus.  The virus continues to spread in poor nations.

The steep increase of heat load endured by the earth ought to send us screaming for the door. 

Is there a basis for hope, a reasonable expectation for a safe and humane future?

Early this morning I was awakened by thunder, a sound which I’ve not heard for months.  It is raining.