The Crisis Report - 112
Albedo, La Nina, El Nino, and EEI
Mainstream Climate Science is starting to acknowledge that “Houston we have a problem”.
Which means that in 18 to 36 months the general public is going to become aware just how BAD things are going to get.
The SIGNS are “adding up”.
Earth’s Energy Imbalance More Than Doubled in Recent Decades — First published: 10 May 2025 https://doi.org/10.1029/2024AV001636
Abstract
Global warming results from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which upset the delicate balance between the incoming sunlight, and the reflected and emitted radiation from Earth.
The imbalance leads to energy accumulation in the atmosphere, oceans and land, and melting of the cryosphere, resulting in increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather around the globe. Despite the fundamental role of the energy imbalance in regulating the climate system, as known to humanity for more than two centuries, our capacity to observe it is rapidly deteriorating as satellites are being decommissioned.
Key Points
Earth’s energy imbalance more than doubled in recent decades
The large trend has taken us by surprise, and as a community we should strive to understand the underlying causes
Our capability to observe the Earth’s energy imbalance and energy budget is threatened as (the CERES) satellites are decommissioned
From the paper, which is very short by the way.
Global warming results from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which upset the delicate balance between the incoming sunlight, and the reflected and emitted radiation from Earth.
OK, when they mention GHGs (CO2, CH4, NO, etc.) they are talking ONLY about the ENERGY radiating AWAY from the Earth. These gases trap ENERGY in the Climate System and prevent it from radiating back into space. They have nothing to do with the amount of ENERGY going into the Climate System, that's controlled by the ALBEDO. Increasing the level of GHGs in the atmosphere causes the Earth to “retain ENERGY” and warm up.
The imbalance leads to energy accumulation in the atmosphere, oceans and land, and melting of the cryosphere (von Schuckmann et al., 2023), resulting in increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and more extreme weather around the globe (IPCC, 2021). Despite the fundamental role of the energy imbalance in regulating the climate system, as known to humanity for more than two centuries (Fourier, 1822), our capacity to observe it is rapidly deteriorating as satellites are being decommissioned (Loeb et al., 2024).
Worryingly, the observed energy imbalance is rising much faster than expected, reaching +1.8W/m2 in 2023 — or twice that predicted by climate models — after having more than doubled within just two decades.
This strong upward trend in the imbalance is difficult to reconcile with climate models: even if the increase in anthropogenic radiative forcing and associated climate response are accounted for, state-of-the-art global climate models can only barely reproduce the rate of change up to 2020 within the observational uncertainty (Raghuraman et al., 2021).
The continued rise in the energy imbalance since 2020 leaves us with little doubt that the real world signal has left the envelope of model internal variability.
The root cause of the discrepancy between models and observations is currently not well known, but it seems to be dominated by a decrease in Earth’s solar reflectivity (Goessling et al., 2024; Stephens et al., 2022), and model experiments suggest it could be due to poorly modeled sea surface temperature patterns, the representation and emissions of polluting aerosol particles, or something else (Hodnebrog et al., 2024).
The energy imbalance is the result of multiple factors: forcing, feedback and internal variability.
The main forcing is that of anthropogenic emissions that lead to accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emitted infrared radiation to space is reduced, driving a gradually increasing imbalance.
Part of the positive greenhouse gas forcing is offset by the presence of anthropogenic aerosols, which cool climate by reflecting sunlight back to space and influence cloud reflection. The forcing from aerosols, even in recent decades, is poorly known (Bellouin et al., 2020). But some evidence suggests the cooling effect is weakening as governments address air quality issues (e.g., Hodnebrog et al., 2024).
However, the rising surface temperatures also lead to more infrared emission to space, which reduces the energy imbalance, constituting a negative feedback mechanism.
The warming further activates other climate feedbacks from clouds, water vapor, the cryosphere, etc., which together act to amplify global warming.
Internal variability arising from weather and slower modes, such as El Niño and La Nina, can also cause year-to-year fluctuations in the energy imbalance.
Overall, the negative feedbacks are believed to dominate so that over the last decades the enhanced outgoing radiation from feedback mechanisms should have countered a substantial part of the increase in radiative forcing.
With an observed global warming of about +0.6°C (from +0.9°C to the current +1.5°C) over the 2001–2024 period, the enhanced outgoing radiation from feedback mechanisms should have countered a substantial part of the increase in radiative forcing, but that is not clearly evident from the observational record.
Much attention has been given to the record breaking surface temperatures in 2023 and 2024, and this has a bearing on the energy imbalance since the EEI in 2024 beat all records in 2023.
A large accumulation of energy in a single year, however, does not necessarily cause the temperature anomaly in that year. Rather, the temperature in 1 year is perhaps better thought of as the result of the energy accumulated in earlier years, combined with any rapid change in forcing (e.g., aerosol emissions, volcanic eruptions or solar forcing), internal variability within the climate system, as well as climate feedback mechanisms.
The energy imbalance started to decrease already in the second half of 2023, and continued to weaken in 2024 (Figure 1), suggesting that stabilizing feedback mechanisms are now active in the aftermath of the El Niño event.
Whistling past the graveyard here.
A similar pattern was seen after the 2009/10 El Niño, but not nearly as pronounced for the 2015/16 event. Notably, the drop in 2024 relative to 2010 follows the overall upward trend and coming years will tell if the energy imbalance remains at this more modest level, or bounces back up to the high levels observed in recent years.
Disentangling the underlying causes and effects of changes in the energy imbalance relies heavily on observing trends in both the emitted infrared and reflected sunlight, and how they vary spatially and over seasons.
The components of the Earth’s energy imbalance are currently observed using a combination of NASA’s CERES onboard several polar-orbiting satellites, and the total solar irradiance (TSIS-1) instrument on the International Space Station.
The mean of these observations for 07/2005–06/2015 is constrained by estimates of the increase in interior energy, predominantly from rising ocean temperatures monitored using thousands of autonomous Argo floats (Johnson et al., 2016). The resulting radiation budget record requires an overlap of different instruments in orbit to ensure there are no discontinuities between successive missions and to prevent loss of critical data. If there is a gap in the record with this system, then our ability to track and understand changes in the energy imbalance is severely compromised (Loeb et al., 2024).
Currently, four sets of CERES instruments are in space, and the Libera follow-on mission (e.g., Hakuba et al., 2024) with similar or improved capabilities is planned to launch in 2027.
It is likely that within a decade Libera will be the only instrument in space as the other satellites are decommissioned. It will by then be a single point of failure, and at present, there are no formal plans to continue this vital record after Libera’s mission-end.
It will indeed be crucial to closely monitor and quantitatively understand changes in the Earth’s energy accumulation, particularly during the coming decades as the nations of the world take steps to keep global warming well below +2°C (United Nations, 2015).
Stabilizing global warming below +2°C can still be achieved by swiftly phasing out fossil fuel burning.
LOL, this would require “net zero” by 2035. So, realistically it's “fantasy”.
If successful, such mitigation efforts will first manifest in a peak, followed by a slowly declining trend in Earth’s energy imbalance, essentially decades ahead of the temperature signal (Meyssignac et al., 2023).
It is in the energy imbalance that we can follow up and assess the effectiveness of the mitigation efforts on the fly. And if surprises lie ahead, for example, from unexpectedly large aerosol forcing (Hansen et al., 2023), or an unexpected loss of climate stability, then the imbalance is the first place this can be detected.
Dozens of researchers from institutions across the world have called for improved monitoring capability and more research into the evolution of Earth’s energy imbalance.
“The EEI tells us how far we are from stabilizing Earth’s climate, and that’s why we need to measure it. If we don’t know this, then we are driving our climate system blindfolded.”
Regardless of why Earth’s energy imbalance is growing so rapidly, the implications are alarming.
“The larger the imbalance is, the faster climate change happens. If we have more imbalance, that means more energy accumulating, [so] temperatures rise faster.”
— — — — —
This paper was reported in this article.
Earth's energy balance is rising much faster than scientists predicted, and we have no idea why…..For reasons still unknown, Earth's energy imbalance is rising much faster than models can account for. Now, scientists…www.livescience.com
I think you will hear/see more about this in coming months in increasingly mainstream media sources. That's how “science news” gets processed and disseminated to “the public”.
If the ALBEDO dimming continues and persists (which, if it's about cloud diminishment, it will) then the amount of ENERGY going into the Climate System will remain at an elevated level.
As CO2 levels and CH4 levels rise, more and more of this ENERGY will get trapped in the Climate System instead of radiating into space.
90% of the ENERGY in the Climate System is in the oceans.
They are RAPIDLY heating up now.
HEAT is building up.
The Climate Crisis IS deepening and accelerating.
Even mainstream climate science has started to admit it.
Within 18 to 36 months this understanding will start to become “common knowledge”.
As it does, the world “as we knew it” will die.
The Beginning has ENDED.
Now, we are at the beginning of the END.
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”.
rc 07/10/2025
ADDENDUM:
I’ll finish up looking at extinction events and the lessons of the paleoclimate record next time. This paper was just too significant to wait.
Mainstream climate science is starting to crumble.
A paradigm shift is about to happen. Our understanding of the Climate System is about to fundamentally change.
We are about to TRULY UNDERSTAND the RISKS and COSTS of a “fossil fuel based” energy policy.
Over a BILLION people are going to starve during the next decade.
And that’s just the “opening phase” of Collapse.
Very good, as always Richard, but a depressing post.
There is no way that humans en masse will voluntarily give up fossil fuels - we all know that by now. So as I see it there are only three possible solutions that may possibly allow some humans to survive long term:
- An absolute economic collapse, particularly in the big-consumer Western countries, followed by political and social collapse, that leaves the oil industries without a market.
- Some event that pumps huge quantities of sulphates and dust into the air that forces a 3 year or 5 year 'winter' and famine, that kikls off large numbers of humans, especially the Westerners with the biggest consumption habits. That might be a major volcanic eruption, or a nuclear war, or an asteroid strike. I would not be surprised in some country decided to make such a situation take place after preparing their own elites to shelter and (theoretically) survive. Trump is not the only one stupid enough to try it.
- A 'Gaian' event, where the planet itself springs a surprise on us humans, as we are the entire problem, such as a more lethal pandemic, a sudden collapse in the climate that kills ¾ of the human population, or some other combination of 'natural disasters'.
It is sad that we have ended up driving full speed off this climate cliff when many of us have been aware of the issues since the 1970's - a full 50+ years of corporate greed and deliberate political ignorance.
But what's done is done. We are now just along for the ride.
We get to see what both a fossil fuel system and an animal agriculture economy (that uses up 40% of habitable land (which is therefore lost to sequestration) for 20% of food calories, mostly for rich Westerners) does to a planet.