Earth's albedo and global warming

It's actually quite concerning. For some time, many scientists had hoped that a warmer Earth might lead to more clouds and higher albedo, which would then help to moderate warming and balance the climate system. But this shows the opposite is true.

In this way Edward Schwieterman⁽¹⁾ commented the result of a new paper about the Earth's climate. But first of all we must say what is albedo:

(...) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body that reflects all incident radiation.

Now, a black body, an idealized opaque, non-reflective body, emits a thermal electromagnetic radiation that we could estimate also for the Earth. If we modelled it as a perfect black body, we find a temperature about 254.356 K, or -18.8 °C. But if we consider also, for example, the albedo, we can find a temperature of 245 K for albedo equals to 0.4, and a temperature of 255 K for albedo equals to 0.3. So, if the albedo decreases, Earth's temperature increases. And this is exactly what the researchers found.

Goode, P. R., Pallé, E., Shoumko, A., Shoumko, S., Montañes‐Rodriguez, P., & Koonin, S. E. (2021). Earth's Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(17), e2021GL094888. doi:10.1029/2021GL094888

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1. Earth is dimming due to climate change ↩︎

Total's responses to global warming

Building upon recent work on other major fossil fuel companies, we report new archival research and primary source interviews describing how Total responded to evolving climate science and policy in the last 50 years. We show that Total personnel received warnings of the potential for catastrophic global warming from its products by 1971, became more fully informed of the issue in the 1980s, began promoting doubt regarding the scientific basis for global warming by the late 1980s, and ultimately settled on a position in the late 1990s of publicly accepting climate science while promoting policy delay or policies peripheral to fossil fuel control. Additionally, we find that Exxon, through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s. This represents one of the first longitudinal studies of a major fossil fuel company's responses to global warming to the present, describing historical stages of awareness, preparation, denial, and delay.

Bonneuil, C., Choquet, P. L., & Franta, B. (2021). Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total’s responses to global warming, 1971–2021. Global Environmental Change, 102386. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102386

How quantum mechanics explains global warming

posted by @ulaulaman about #globalwarming http://t.co/VDlaEt2s5m

The physician Mark Schleupner, a Ronaoke native, writes about global warming:

So, according to NASA scientists, if all the ice in 14 million sq km Antarctica melts, sea levels will rise more than 200 feet. Greenland alone has another huge chunk of the Earth’s water tied up in ice; some scientists say that its ice sheet has passed a tipping point and will be gone in the next centuries, raising ocean levels by 24 feet. These are scary amounts of sea level rise that put huge areas of population centers (New York, Boston, Miami, San Francisco, etc.) under water.
In the end, one can deny climate change (although I’d not recommend it), but one cannot deny math.

Well, it's really interesting, about the climate change, to see the following Ted-Ed lesson:

You've probably heard that carbon dioxide is warming the Earth. But how exactly is it doing it? Lieven Scheire uses a rainbow, a light bulb and a bit of quantum physics to describe the science behind global warming.