Earth's Energy Imbalance and Climate Change
Kevin Trenberth
Former Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC
In this video, Kevin introduces Earth’s Energy Budget and the Complexity of the Climate System. He also talks about the increasing pace of the earth's energy imbalance, which is responsible for extreme weather events such as floods, wildfires, heat waves, and storms occurring more frequently than ever.
In this video, Kevin introduces Earth’s Energy Budget and the Complexity of the Climate System. He also talks about the increasing pace of the earth's energy imbalance, which is responsible for extreme weather events such as floods, wildfires, heat waves, and storms occurring more frequently than ever.
Earth's Energy Imbalance and Climate Change
18 mins 38 secs
The concentration of greenhouse gases from human activities has reached 420 parts per million (PPM), and is rising at about 2.5PPM per year. This concentration of gases acts as a blanket around the planet, trapping energy and warming it up, causing an energy imbalance. This excess energy (heat) has to be stored somewhere. It can be stored in the land, the atmosphere, the oceans or ice. Each of these components has different heat storage capabilities and they are all negatively impacted by the excess energy, and given they are all interconnected, any issues are amplified.
Key learning objectives:
Understand why there is an energy imbalance on Earth
Outline where excess energy is stored
Understand some of the negative effects of storing this excess energy
Kevin Trenberth
18:57
19:41
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