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Research Articles
Submitted on January 26, 2005 Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications
1 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA; Columbia Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY 10025, USA. * To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 ± 0.15 W/m2 more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years. Implications include: (i) expectation of additional global warming of about 0.6°C without further change of atmospheric composition; (ii) confirmation of the climate system's lag in responding to forcings, implying the need for anticipatory actions to avoid any specified level of climate change; and (iii) likelihood of acceleration of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)