That unimaginable amount of energy is why July was the hottest month on record, and why 2023 may rank as warmest year.
…Earth’s Energy Imbalance Measured in Atom Bombs
Former NASA-GISS director James Hansen has played a key role in alerting humanity to risks posed by those emissions, dating all the way back to the 1980s. Now serving as director of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University, Hansen cuts through the fog of climate science complexity by focusing on how we have thrown the energy balance of our planet out of whack. As he put it in a TED Talk in 2012:
“Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed. It reduces Earth’s heat radiation to space, so there’s a temporary energy imbalance. More energy is coming in than going out, until Earth warms up enough to again radiate to space as much energy as it absorbs from the Sun.”
Back when he gave that TED Talk, Hansen noted that this energy imbalance was about six-tenths of a watt per square meter. “That may not sound like much, but when added up over the whole world, it’s enormous,” he said.
Since then, the energy imbalance has only grown bigger: Research has revealed that from mid-2005 to mid-2019, it has roughly doubled.
To fully grasp what that means, consider this: Before that doubling, Hansen estimated that the energy building up in Earth’s climate system was equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day, 365 days per year.
Now, with a rough doubling in the imbalance, we’re sprinting toward a million atom bombs of energy accumulating each and every day…
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