Earth is darkening

The Earth is losing some of its shine, a to study published in Geophysical Research Letters last week. It seems that climate change and natural climate change have essentially scuffed our planet. We really can’t have nice things, can we?

The study examines shard of earth, or the light reflected by the planet which projects a faint light on the surface of the Mgood. It is also known as Da Vinci Glow, because Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to write formally about it. Research has come a long way since da Vinci was written 500 years ago, and the new findings use two decades of data on the glow of the earth collected at the Big Bear Solar Observatory using a special type of telescope to see themgood.

The best time to observe the brilliance of the earth is when the Moon increases or decreases. Look at themSoon then, and you may be able to distinguish a slight outline of the set Moon in addition to the ribbon brightly lit by the SUN. This ghostly outline is due to the shine of the earth, caused by the sunthe night reflecting our planet.

The observatory is perfectly located to measure the brightness of the earth on 40% of the planet, covering the Pacific and parts of North America. Analysis of data for around 800 nights between 1998 and 2017 showed a slight but significant drop in the brightness of the earth. There have been year-to-year changes, but the paper notes that these are “fairly inconspicuous, with long-term decline dominating the time series.”

Scientists used satellite data to assess what caused the obscuration. Land, ice, clouds, and the open ocean all have different levels of reflectivity that contribute to the shine of the land. (The reflectivity of different surfaces is also called albedo.) The results indicate that the disappearance of clouds in the tropical Pacific is the culprit for the weakening of the brightness of the Earth. “The decline in albedo surprised us so much when we analyzed the last three years of data after 17 years of near-flat albedo,” said Philip Goode, a New Jersey Institute of Technology researcher and lead author of the report, in a statement.

Because the data spans 20 years, it also includes two solar cycles. TheThe UN is going through 11-year spells of increasing and decreasing activity, and this is the preferred explanation of climate deniers for climate change. Just as climatologists politely but firmly noted “no, that is very wrong”, so have the researchers here.

“Our data, therefore, do not support an argument for a detectable imprint of direct or indirect solar activity mechanisms on Earth’s reflectance over the past two decades,” they wrote. In other words, it’s not the fucking Sa dimmer is Earth. Seriously, please stop blaming the SUN. What did it do to you?

Instead, the results point to two possible culprits that might even work in tandem. Climate change has raised the temperature everywhere, including in the oceans. This could reduce cloud cover in the area. Likewise, there could also be a shift in what is known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a natural climate change that turned into a warm phase after 2010 and which could also have the same impact on clouds.

It might sound like a trivial question, but it’s actually quite worrying. Lowering the Earth’s albedo means more incoming solar energy is reaching the planet. The extra greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels mean that the extra energy is trapped here in the form of heat. Not good!

Measure the shine of the earth on the Mo it may seem like a strange way to keep an eye on the climate of, well, Earth. But the researchers note that unlike Earth-gazing satellites, which can experience instrument drift, measuring the Earth’s brightness is a relative measurement allowing more consistent readings. They’re arguing for more research into the Shard of the Earth, which is honestly fascinating and odd enough that we want more of it.

The dip in the earth’s brilliance adds to the recently published litany of bizarre climate discoveries. Among them are the crust of Earth moving in a strange way and the axis of the planet wobble in new ways. It is not yet clear what climate change will ruin, but we must expect the unexpected.