What is it about?

Earth is heating up since it is absorbing more sunlight energy than it is losing to space through emitted heat due to rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. We calculate that energy is currently building up at the rate of 0.6 Watts for each square metre of the globe (equivalent to 150 billion two-kilowatt kettles continuously boiling the oceans). We found that heating of the planet increased from the 1985-1999 period to the 2000-2012 period, despite slowing in the rate of surface warming.

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Why is it important?

Understanding how Earth is currently heating up now helps us to gauge how much the planet is going to warm in the future. This is vital for making decisions on how to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The results also show that while surface temperatures have warmed little in the last 15 years, heating of Earth has actually increased, instead warming deeper layer of the ocean. This is consistent with the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities, indicating that we can expect global warming to continue into the future.

Perspectives

Observations show a decline in the rate at which the Earth’s surface has been warming since the 1980s-1990s. Yet our research indicates that if anything the Earth is gaining heat at an increasing rate. Currently heat is accumulating at a rate approximately equivalent to every person worldwide using 20 kettles each to continuously boil the oceans. Fluctuations within our vast oceans from one decade to the next are most likely responsible for temporarily slowing the rate of global surface warming.

Professor Richard P Allan
University of Reading

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This page is a summary of: Changes in global net radiative imbalance 1985-2012, Geophysical Research Letters, August 2014, American Geophysical Union (AGU),
DOI: 10.1002/2014gl060962.
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