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Energy In ≥ Energy Out Impacts
Energy In ≥ Energy Out Impacts
How do various factors affect Earth's Energy Balance?
How do various factors affect Earth's Energy Balance?
Six processes that directly impact the Earth's Energy Balance are listed to the right.
For your given topic:
How does your factor affect the Earth's Energy Balance? Refer to these models.
Please read the introduction / materials on this page. Use this to guide your research.
Determine trends in your topic during the past.
Describe the feedback mechanism related to your process. (Naturally how does your topic reach equilibrium?)
Direct impact on other factors, while researching you may find that your factor influences one or more other factors. Describe these impacts and how they influence the feedback mechanisms.
The science behind these impacts
Show differences between natural processes affecting your topic and current conditions.
Why Should We Be Concerned?
Why Should We Be Concerned?
Glaciers
Glaciers
How will the loss of glaciers impact the rate of climate change?
Albedo is a measure of the reflectivity of a surface, and varies among different materials.
Lighter colors reflect more light than do darker colors.
Ice and snow reflect significantly more light than other surfaces on the Earth.
More reflected light results in less energy into Earth’s system, resulting in lower temps on Earth.
As the Earth warms, there is less glacial ice.
This reduces the albedo, increasing the amount of energy in
Resulting in an increase of Earth’s average global temperature
This is positive feedback
This also decreases the salinity of the oceans, affecting the ocean currents
Ocean Circulation
Ocean Circulation
Mixing the waters of the worlds oceans distributes heat, what if it stopped?
"Water flows through the oceans in steady recycling patterns, determined by the Coriolis force and the particular positions of the continents in our time. Surface currents can move in the opposite direction to bottom currents below them, and often do, forming systems like giant conveyor belts of water. The largest one is already famous, at least in part: the Gulf Stream is a segment of a warm surface current that flows north up the entire length of the Atlantic, all the way to Norway and Greenland. There the water cools and sinks, and begins a long journey south on the Atlantic Ocean floor, to the Cape of Good Hope and then east toward Australia, and even into the Pacific, where the water upwells and rejoins the surface flow, west to the Atlantic for the long haul north again. The round trip for any given water molecule takes about a thousand years. Cooling salty water sinks more easily than fresh water. Trade winds sweep clouds generated in the Gulf of Mexico west over Central America to dump their rain in the Pacific, leaving the remaining water in the Atlantic that much saltier. So the cooling water in the North Atlantic sinks well, aiding the power of the Gulf Stream. If the surface of the North Atlantic were to become rapidly fresher, it would not sink so well when it cooled, and that could stall the conveyor belt. The Gulf Stream would have nowhere to go, and would slow down, and sink farther south. Weather everywhere would change, becoming windier and drier in the Northern Hemisphere, and colder in places, especially in Europe. The sudden desalination of the North Atlantic might seem an unlikely occurrence, but it has happened before. At the end of the last Ice Age, for instance, vast shallow lakes were created by the melting of the polar ice cap. Eventually these lakes broke through their ice dams and poured off into the oceans. North America still sports scars from three or four of these cataclysmic floods; one flowed down the Mississippi, one the Hudson, one the St. Lawrence. These flows stalled the world ocean conveyor belt current, and the climate of the whole world changed as a result, sometimes in as little as three years. Now, with Greenland’s ice cap melting fast, and the Arctic sea ice breaking into bergs, would enough fresh water flow into the North Atlantic to stall the Gulf Stream again?"
"Green Earth (The Science in the Capital)" by Kim Stanley Robinson
the ocean covers 70% of the earth’s surface
the ocean stores a thousand times more heat than the atmosphere
seawater stores four times more heat per unit mass than air
It distributes heat from the equator to the polar regions, therefore regulating the average global temperature
The ocean’s deepwater currents are driven by two variables: amount of salt in the water (salinity), and the temperature of the water.
As the Earth warms, the difference in temperature between surface water (warm) and deep water (cold) lessens, threatening the first mechanism that drives the deep currents.
As glaciers melt, the ocean’s salinity lessens, threatening the second mechanism that drives the deep currents.
As these two factors lessen, so does the ability of the ocean to distribute the equatorial heat. Equatorial regions will become even warmer, higher latitudes will become even colder. Ultimately, this will affect where we can inhabit the Earth.
Forest Fires
Forest Fires
How can a small fire contribute to global event?
This figure shows the distribution of acreage burned by large wildfires, based on the level of damage caused to the landscape—a measure of wildfire severity. Large wildfires are defined as fires with an area larger than 1,000 acres in the western United States and 500 acres in the eastern United States. The total acreage shown in Figure 3 is slightly less than the total in Figure 2 because Figure 3 is limited to large fires and because a few areas did not have sufficient satellite imagery to allow damage to be assessed.
Data source: MTBS, 202225
Web update: July 2022
The smoke from forest fires produces soot, water vapor, and carbon dioxide.
The soot blocks incoming sunlight, temporarily reducing the energy into Earth’s system and lowering the temperature in the area.
The addition of carbon dioxide and water vapor into the atmosphere will decrease the energy out of Earth’s system (because they prevent heat from escaping into space) in the long term.
On a small scale, the overall effect on climate is minimal.
A satellite image of smoke over north-east Russia. Fires began last May (2021) as snow melted in Yakutia. By August 2021, blazes had burnt much of the larch forest. Photograph: Aqua/Modis/Nasa
Climate change is affecting the global distribution on water via the water cycle.
As areas become more prone to drought (extreme lack of rainfall), there are more frequent wildfires on a much larger scale.
The effects of these fires on climate become much more profound. Short-term reduction of temperature (soot reducing energy in), but the addition of more greenhouse gasses contribute to an overall long-term increase in average global temperature (decreasing energy out)
Green House Effect
Green House Effect
How do various gases in the atmosphere, contribute to the changes in our climate?
The greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon upon which all life on Earth depends
Greenhouse gasses (CO2, H2O, Methane, etc) trap the energy (heat) that is emitted from the Earth’s surface (reduces the energy out)..
This allows for temperatures on Earth to maintain a stable temperature and prevent it from freezing.
As we continue to increase the quantity of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, we continue to decrease the amount of energy out of the Earth’s system, thus further increasing the Earth’s average global temperature.
Apart from CO2, CO4 and N2O, we have hydroflourocarbons, perflourocarbons and sulfur hexaflouride (HFC's, PFC's & SF6). It's a complicated gas soup with water vapour featuring prominently in the mix - something we cannot do much about. We can only deal with man-made gases.
Human Activities: CO2 Emissions
Human Activities: CO2 Emissions
Human Activities: Agriculture
Human Activities: Agriculture
As the demand for meat continues to increase globally, so does the need for land and resources to grow it.
This means that more land needs to be cleared, exacerbating the deforestation issue
Furthermore, most animals we eat are plant-eaters, which produce a tremendous amount of methane as a by-product of digesting plants.
Methane is 33 times more potent of a GHG as is CO2, thus further decreasing the energy out of Earth’s energy system.
Human Activities: Deforestation
Human Activities: Deforestation
Deforestation happens mainly for urbanization (cities) and agriculture (food).
Forests are great sources of carbon sequestration (removing CO2 from the atmosphere). As we tear them down, we increase the amount of GHG and therefore decrease the amount of energy out of Earth’s systems.
Tropical Deforestation - 25% of World's Deforestation
Tropical Deforestation - 25% of World's Deforestation
Water Cycle
Water Cycle
On Earth, water exists in all 3 phases: solid (ice), liquid (surface water and clouds), and gas (water vapor in the atmosphere)
Ice and clouds significantly contribute to the albedo effect, which reduces the amount of energy into Earth’s system.
Surface water stores heat energy, and water vapor reduces the amount of energy out (water vapor is a greenhouse gas).
The overall effect is regulatory under normal conditions.
As the Earth warms, water spends more time as vapor, further increasing the greenhouse effect (less energy out).
Furthermore, the global distribution of water is disrupted, and long-standing wind patterns are disturbed.
As a result, the global distribution of atmospheric water has changed, resulting in more frequent extreme weather events (ie. droughts, monsoons, typhoons, etc.)
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