Timeline for Does global warming trap as much heat as 600,000 Hiroshima-class bombs every day?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 13 at 14:47 | comment | converted from answer | John Mitchell | The 2010 values have been updated and new satellite measurement techniques have come online to address this issue. Current CERES satellite energy imbalance (for the last 12-month average is 2.3 Watts per meter squared average top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance. This is the change in NET energy that is producing warming (all incoming energy minus all outgoing energy). This value is over 3 times what the value was when Hansen and Sato published their analysis in 2010 with an average value of 0.58 net watts per meter squared. The current daily "Little Boy" equivalent is 1,584,000 Hiroshima bombs | |
| S Jan 28, 2023 at 8:36 | history | mod moved comments to chat | |||
| S Jan 28, 2023 at 8:36 | comment | added | tim | Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 22:49 | comment | added | Reznik | @Dan Romick The important point that JohnathanReez is making is that the earth is a LOT bigger than Hiroshima. It may not be misleading to someone who understands thermodynamics, but to others this quote might sound like we're constantly feeling the effects of being nuked right now. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 20:17 | comment | added | JonathanReez | @DanRomik I think it will get downvoted, but here you go: skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/54302/23144 | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 19:45 | comment | added | wizzwizz4 | @JonathanReez So why do you think this claim is misleading, rather than analogous? | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 16:23 | comment | added | Dan Romik | @komodosp it’s a lot, first, because we are already seeing very dramatic effects from it. Second, because it’s an energy imbalance, so any number other than 0 will lead to bad things happening sooner or later. Third, because the climate system has positive feedback loops that amplify changes in the energy cycle, so that a little excess heating now can lead to a much larger amount of heating in the future. For an extreme example of this, google “Venus runaway greenhouse effect”. Other less extreme but still quite bad feedback loops of this type are already in play with our climate. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 15:59 | comment | added | John Bollinger | Perhaps I'm a bit jaded, @DanRomik, but you might be surprised how many scientists read published papers uncritically. How much would you like to bet that the vast majority of those citations are in introductions that just pull the 400k bombs / day estimate without any particular thought or discussion of the paper's methodology? Surely some readers do apply scrutiny, but I don't accept the citation count as a good indicator of how many. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 14:53 | comment | added | John Bollinger | The number of citations certainly shows that the article was influential, but that doesn't imply that its contents have received more scrutiny than average. I do agree with the "bottom line" summary, however. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 14:36 | comment | added | Pere | @komodosp - The comparison with what we get from the Sun is not useful. The natural balance is that we radiate as much as we get, so the comparison is between a 0 W/m2 balance and a 0,57 W/m2 balance, which in decades adds a lot. However, again that unbalance should be measured by its effects - temperature increase. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 11:11 | comment | added | jkej | @Tim That's the solar constant, which is how much radiation you get on a surface perpendicular to the sun. So you need to multiply by the surface of a great circle on Earth (pi R^2) and divide by Earth's surface area (4pi R^2), which gives a quarter of the solar constant. So more like 340 W per square meter. | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 11:03 | comment | added | Tim | @komodosp 1.3kW per square metre, or 950 million per day. Wolfram alpha helpfully tells me that’s a frequency of 11kHz | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 10:39 | comment | added | komodosp | Then the next question of course is, is that a lot? Like how many Little Boys do we get from the sun per day? (for comparison) | |
| Jan 20, 2023 at 0:30 | comment | added | Schwern | Wolfram Alpha confirms, 400,000 Little Boys a day == 0.57 watts per square meter. | |
| Jan 19, 2023 at 21:13 | history | edited | Dan Romik | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 410 characters in body
|
| Jan 19, 2023 at 21:06 | history | answered | Dan Romik | CC BY-SA 4.0 |