* Astronomy

Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info TOPIC: Global dimming


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
RE: Global dimming
Permalink  
 


NJIT Solar Physicists Report Paradox in Eos: Less Sunlight, But Temps Rise

Less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The scientists, who monitor the Earth’s reflectance by measuring what is known as the moon’s earthshine, have observed that the amount of light reflected by Earth — its albedo — has increased since 2000. The result has been less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface.

Our findings have significant implications for the study of climate change. The results raise questions about how global temperatures can still rise when the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has decreased” - Philip R. Goode, PhD, principal investigator and distinguished professor of physics at NJIT.

The scientists find that the seemingly paradoxical result is due to an increase in the cloud cover coupled with a peculiar re-arrangement of the clouds, but are unsure why this is happening. This large variability of the clouds and albedo presents a fundamental, unmet challenge to our ability to understand and predict the Earth’s climate.
Goode is the director of Big Bear Solar Observatory, California, where the observations were carried out. NJIT has owned and operated the observatory since 1997. Goode’s findings are reported in “Can the Earth’s Albedo and Surface Temperatures Increase Together,” published by Eos (Jan. 24, 2006), the weekly newspaper of geophysics published by the American Geophysical Union. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration funded the research.

Recently analysed cloud data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) confirm the trend in reflectance. The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight. These large and peculiar variability's of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth’s climate” - Philip R. Goode.

Co-authors with Goode are post-doctoral associates Enric Palle and Pilar Montanes-Rodriguez, who work at the observatory, and Steven E. Koonin, a professor of theoretical physics at California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).

Climate depends on sunlight, less the part of sunlight that is promptly reflected plus how well the Earth holds heat. At any moment, more than half the Earth is swathed in clouds, and they dominate the Earth’s reflectance. Both the sunlight reaching Earth and the amount of atmospheric heat trapped are sensitive to clouds, which both cool the Earth (especially low thick clouds) by reflecting the sunlight and warm the Earth by acting as blankets (especially high thin clouds).
It has been argued that an increasing albedo during the past five years would be inconsistent with the observed behaviour in the global land and sea-surface temperatures because, in principle, an increase in the albedo would seem to imply that the decrease in the sunlight absorbed by the planet would lead to cooler temperatures.
The just-released update of the 20-year sequence of ISCCP satellite cloud data shows that during the first 15 years of observations, the percent difference between high lying and low-lying clouds remained steady at 7-8 percent. But in the last five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has almost doubled to 13 percent. The ISCCP data is a careful compilation of cloud observations covering the entire Earth from a range of meteorological satellites.

That increase in the difference signals a relative decrease in the cooling effect of clouds. Thus, the rising reflectance of the Earth has not led to a reversal of global warming from the increase in sunlight being reflected back into space” - Philip R. Goode.

What has happened is that the low, cooling clouds have decreased during the most recent years, while high, warming clouds have increased even more. Thus, the cloud data also reveal an increase in total cloud amount during 2000-2004. That increase is consistent with the earlier earthshine result of growing reflectance throughout that period.

Goode noted that the Earth's reflectance depends primarily on cloud properties. Recent ground-based and satellite studies of the albedo have shown a surprisingly significant inter-annual and decadal variability. From about 1985-2000, the Earth steadily received more sunlight, before the recent reversal of the trend from 2000-2004.

This is not the first time such a situation occurred” - Philip R. Goode.

Ground-based radiometers hint at a similar reversal from the 1960’s through the mid-1980’s, which some scientists have dubbed global dimming. Thus, it seems there may be a large, unexplained decadal variation in sunlight reaching the Earth, as well as a large effect of clouds re-arranging by altitude.

From these data and results, we caution scientists against concluding that global dimming would mean a cooler Earth, and that clouds need a better treatment in climate models” - Philip R. Goode.

The earthshine studied by Goode and his colleagues can be seen as a ghostly glow associated with the moon’s “dark side” — or the portion of the lunar disk not lit by the Sun. The cloudier the Earth, the brighter the earthshine.

The phenomenon of earthshine was first observed by Leonardo DaVinci” - Philip R. Goode.

Source

__________________


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 

On average, the Sun shines on Earth 341 watts of energy per square meter of surface area. The Sun beams more energy to our planet every hour than humanity uses in a whole year. This energy provides the fuel needed to support most of our world’s life forms, and it keeps our world warm enough to sustain them. Sunlight also provides the energy that powers Earth’s climate system.





The image shows Earth’s average albedo for March 2005, measured by the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite. Albedo is a unitless index value indicating the fraction of incoming sunlight that our planet reflects back to space. If Earth was covered in ice like a giant snowball, its albedo would be about 0.84, meaning it would reflect most of the sunlight that hit it. On the other hand, if Earth was completely covered by a dark green forest canopy, its albedo would be about 0.14, meaning most of the sunlight would get absorbed and our world would be far warmer than it is today. Satellite measurements made since the late 1970s estimate Earth’s average albedo to be about 0.30.
In the albedo image above, white shows areas where Earth reflected the highest percentage of shortwave solar radiation. Dark blue shows areas where Earth reflected the lowest percentage of shortwave solar radiation. Notice how the highest albedo values are in regions where Earth is mostly covered by snow and ice, or clouds, or both. The lowest albedo values occur in regions where there are forest-covered landscapes or open ocean.

Read more

__________________


L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Permalink  
 


Two new studies suggest that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface is increasing...


Previous work had found the opposite trend, leading to a popular theory known as "global dimming".


But using two different methods involving ground monitoring stations and satellite data, the new studies show that solar radiation at the surface has risen for at least the last decade, possibly because of reduced atmospheric pollution.


"Since 1990, many stations giving high-quality data have been built - and overall, they show an increase in radiation reaching the Earth's surface."


Between about 1960 and 1990, it is believed that global dimming did occur, as found in records from an earlier generation of monitoring stations, and from experiments measuring the rate of evaporation of water - an indirect measure of the Sun's energy at the Earth's surface.


That trend has now started to reverse.


"We have found in many places that indeed we do agree with observations that have been made at the ground, that there was a decrease up to the '90s and then there was an increase. When we analyse the entire record for the 20 years, we don't see a dimming; we see a slight increase in the amount of radiation when averaged over global scales." - Dr Rachel Pinker, from the University of Maryland.


"In India, we see no upturn in radiation, nor in China. But over most of the rest of the world, notably Europe, we do. Since 1990, the atmosphere has become much cleaner with the introduction in many places of clean air legislation. The other thing that happened in 1990 was the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its bloc of countries, which led to less output from their highly polluting industries.” - Dr Eleanor Highwood, a climatologist at the UK's Reading University


So it could simply be that over many areas of land, the atmosphere is cleaner - more sunlight is penetrating to the surface; whereas Asia is still pumping out aerosol particles and, as a consequence, no brightening is observed there.



__________________
Page 1 of 1  sorted by
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.



Create your own FREE Forum
Report Abuse
Powered by ActiveBoard