Category Archives: energy balance

Earth's energy imbalance

Surface temperature rise is often thought of as synonymous with climate change. However a recently published paper in Nature Climate Change argues that Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) is what ultimately sets the pace of climate change and that substantive progress can be made by monitoring this key climate variable.

Guest post by Matt Palmer and Doug McNeall (UK Met Office) Continue reading Earth's energy imbalance

Back-of-the-envelope attribution of global temperature changes

Many of those skeptical about the causes of climate change suggest that the complex global climate models (GCMs) often used to make attribution statements are not trustworthy. Here I highlight that GCMs are not needed to roughly attribute nearly all of the observed warming (at least) to changes in greenhouse gases. Continue reading Back-of-the-envelope attribution of global temperature changes

Earth's energy imbalance

Global surface air temperatures have risen less rapidly over the past 15 years than the previous few decades. The causes of this ‘hiatus’ have been much debated. However, just considering surface temperatures does not tell the whole story – a new analysis using satellite & ocean observations confirms that the Earth is still gaining energy overall. Continue reading Earth's energy imbalance