Since the warming of theOceans next to the plastic wasteAs climate change impacts reflected sunlight, our planet may become darker. According to researchers, this causes fewer bright clouds to reflect sunrays into space, causing even more energy to end up in Earth's climate system. The scientists used decades-long measurements of light reflected from Earth that illuminates the moon's surface. They wanted to find out whether the planet's reflectivity has decreased significantly over the past two decades. The Earth now reflects about half a watt less light per square meter than it did 20 years ago. Most of the decline occurred in the last three years.
How climate change promotes impacts on reflected sunlight
According to the authors of the new research, warming ocean waters have led to a decrease in Earth's brightness. The current reflected sunlight represents a 0.5% decrease in reflectivity, and the Earth's surface reflects about 30% of the sunshine. The planet's so-called albedo, or reflectivity, was a big surprise for the research team. In addition, the study authors found an almost flat albedo based on data from the last three years. Two things affect the net sunlight that reaches Earth: the brightness of the Sun and the reflectivity of the planet. The changes in Earth's albedo observed by the researchers did not correlate with periodic changes in the sun's brightness so that its changed reflectivity was caused by something terrestrial. Accordingly, satellite measurements showed a decrease in bright, reflective low-lying clouds over the eastern Pacific. Due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillationglobal climate changeEffects on sea surface temperatures namely in this area.
The darkening of the Earth can also be seen in how much solar energy the Earth's climate system captures. Once this significant additional solar energy is present in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, it can contribute to global warming. This is because additional sunlight is of the same magnitude as total anthropogenic climate forcing over the past two decades. This is also quite worrying for planetary scientists. For a long time, many scientists had hoped that a warmer Earth could lead to more clouds and a higher albedo. This would then help moderate warming and balance the climate system.This studyhowever, shows that exactly the opposite is the case.
