Different Recipes For Cooking Our Planet

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 08/26/14

Dr. Conca reports that we have been hearing that the Earth is not really heating since the mean global surface temperatures have been almost flat for the last 17 years. But there is no hiatus, no lull, and no reverse in global warming the Earth is just warming in different ways. Indeed, there is more than one way to heat a planet. As a geologist, this is no surprise given the complexity of planetary heat transfer and other global processes. Some areas get colder, some hotter, some drier, some even get more snow as the winters get warmer. The average temperature of the lower atmosphere is what most non-scientists focus on, and it has only risen a little since the late 1990s. But the lower atmosphere is only one heat sink, and not a very effective one. Other large heat sinks include the ice sheets, soil moisture, the biosphere, the shallow oceans and the deep oceans. The latter two are not well-connected and mixing at medium depths has strong but delayed effects on sea surface temperatures and, thus, lower atmospheric temperatures.