AI Summary
5 min readThe surface temperature of the oceans between 60° north and 60° south has been at a record for the time of year all through July and almost all through June. The seas are very hot at the moment, and the reason is not just the greenhouse gases everyone knows about. There is a second, less appreciated force at work: the Earth itself is getting dimmer.
The planet’s growing energy imbalance
Oliver Morton, the Economist’s planetary affairs editor, explains that the heat in the oceans is the biggest store of heat on the planet. It is driven by how much heat the Earth absorbs from the sun and how much it gives off as infrared radiation. The Earth is now absorbing considerably more heat than it used to. Part of this is the familiar effect of global warming: fewer clouds and scarcer ice caps mean the planet absorbs more energy. But there is a second issue: the Earth is also being made less reflective because humans are putting less of a particular sort of pollutant into the atmosphere.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:46) **Ocean Heat and Earth's Diminishing Reflectivity** - Oliver Morton introduces the record-breaking ocean surface temperatures and the fundamental mechanism behind them.
- 2 (03:18) **Two Distinct Forces Driving the Warming** - Morton separates the known effect of greenhouse gases from a less-appreciated second factor: the cleanup of reflective aerosol pollution.
- 3 (04:34) **The Consequence: Earth's Energy Imbalance** - The direct result of this diminished reflectivity is that the amount of energy absorbed by the Earth has more than doubled in the last twenty years.
- 4 (05:33) **The Under-Remarked Proof: Argo Floats** - Morton explains the ingenious and robust system used to verify the satellite data, providing confidence in the findings.
- 5 (06:33) **The Unintended Consequence of Cleaning Up Pollution** - The host draws the crucial link: efforts to solve one health crisis (smog) have exacerbated another (global warming).
- 6 (07:20) **The Radical Solution: Solar Geoengineering** - Morton introduces the controversial proposal to directly counteract the lost reflectivity by putting reflective particles in the upper atmosphere.
- 7 (09:05) **The Forecast: Accelerated Warming Ahead** - Without intervention, the diminishing effect of aerosols will continue, while greenhouse gas-driven feedbacks like cloud loss may be stronger than previously thought.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Fewer clouds, shrinking ice caps, changing pollutants: all result in less of the sun’s energy being reflected back into space. Which is more bad news for a changing climate. Our correspondent explains why so much more of the world’s cocaine is passing through west Africa. And the data that reveal Americans’ discomfort about wives earning more than their husbands.
Guests and host:
- Oliver Morton, planetary-affairs editor
- Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi, Africa correspondent
- Doug Dowson, data journalist
- Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- climate change, albedo, global temperatures
- Africa, cocaine, smuggling
- wage equality, gender pay gap
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