According to a new study published in the first issue of Environmental Research: Climate, the most important metric to measure the effects of climate change is the energy balance on Earth.
Kevin Trenberth, the lead author of the new book, and Lijing Cheng, a climate scientist, have made a new inventory of all the different sources of excess heat on Earth. He compared the energy changes from the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice to the radiation at the top of the Earth's atmosphere to see if there was a balance.
The only practical way to measure the net energy imbalance is to look at how much heat is absorbed from the Sun and how much is able to return to space.
Understanding the net energy gain of the climate system is important to inform and address the climate crisis. Climate research has focused on the rise of the global mean surface temperature. The total energy imbalance on Earth is just one of many outcomes.
Excess energy increases the number of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, heat waves, and floods. The climate system gets rid of energy by moving it around and by sending it into space, which affects the rise in temperature around the world. The study showed that the Earth's oceans end up with most of the extra heat from the imbalance because of their higher temperature and sea level.
It is difficult to model the Earth energy balance. Understanding how all forms of energy are distributed across the globe will give us a better understanding of our future.
More information: Kevin E Trenberth et al, A perspective on climate change from Earth's energy imbalance, Environmental Research: Climate (2022). DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ac6f74
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