NEW DELHI: With temperatures soaring worldwide, the US space agency NASA's annual satellite data shows that the earth is heating at an unprecedented rate and there was a record rise between March 2021 and February 2022 with a lot of additional energy in the earth's system available to heat oceans, land, and atmosphere, melt ice and increase sea levels.
According to scientists, NASA data shows the earth is heating at an unprecedented speed of 1.64 watt per square meter (W/m²). It is equivalent to the heat generated by a million Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every day.
This summer, parts of India have already faced soaring temperatures with scientists linking it to climate change and the heating of the earth.
Another 12-month EEI (Earth's Energy Imbalance is the rate at which the world heats up) record from March 21-February 22 shows there is a lot of additional energy in the Earth's system.
Leon Simons, a climate researcher, said that NASA's CERES radiative flux data for 2021 had the annual Earth's Energy Imbalance at 1.52 W/m², the energy equivalent to 1 million Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every day. The rate of global warming has tripled in the past 20 years.
This year it stood at 1.64 W/m². To stabilize the climate, the EEI should fluctuate around 0 W/m² and to cool it needs to be negative on average.
Simons says what makes this new record even more significant is that NASA's CERES team responsible for this satellite-based data expected the rate of heat uptake to decrease instead of increase.
"The data clearly shows the increase in heating is a result of Absorbed Solar Radiation (ASR) increasing faster than Outgoing Longwave Radiation. The increased greenhouse gas concentrations limit the amount of heat that radiates to space, while the increase in ASR is in part also caused by the rapid decrease in emission of sulfur," he tweeted.
He further says that particles from the burning of fossil fuels, notably coal and heavy fuel oil by ships, reflect light and increase cloud cover and reflectivity.