Leon Simons (looking up) Profile picture
Sep 3, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
The most important graph in the world has been updated to include the last 150,000 years!

📄 Benthic δ¹⁸O records Earth’s energy imbalance

Great work by Sarah Shackleton, Alan Seltzer, Daniel Bagenstos and Lorraine Lisiecki (2023) in @NatureGeosci

1/
nature.com/articles/s4156…
This shows the Earth's Energy Imbalance from a new perspective.

We have changed the rate at which heat accumulates on our planet beyond anything ever before.

We are finding out what this means together.

And we better pay attention.

Rapid changes come with great risks!

2/2 Image
The paper has a very insightful "agnostic" approach to Earth's Energy Imbalance of the past, by looking at differences in oxygen isotopes from a sea level (water turning to ice and vice versa) and global ocean temperature perspective.

It doesn't seem to matter very much what the heat was directed towards, if you mainly care about the absolute Earth Energy Imbalance numbers.

More in this infographic and description:

Agnostic reconstruction of Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) from δ18Obenth. Here we outline the steps taken to calculate EEI from δ18Obenth (left to right), which are described in detail in the methods. Briefly, δ18Obenth21 (left) is converted into sea level (second panel, top in yellow) and ocean temperature (second panel, bottom in green) using the assumption that the δ18Obenth signal is entirely attributed to one or the other. We then calculate the energy change associated with ice sheet buildup/melting from the sea level reconstruction (third panel, yellow) and with ocean warming/cooling from the ocean temperature reconstruction (third panel, green). EEI is then calculated by taking the time derivative of the energy changes and averaging over Earth’s surface area (panel 4). The gray lines in panels 3 and 4 show the calculated the global energy change (ΔEglobal) and EEI if we assume a constant 60/40 split of δ18Obenth between ice volume and ocean temperature changes.

The 150,000 year Earth's Energy Imbalance figure (c) from the paper: Image
Data can be accessed here:

zenodo.org/record/8237374
@MartinWermuth @WeatherProf ceres-tool.larc.nasa.gov/ord-tool/jsp/E…
Here I've added the +0.5 W/m² average Earth's Energy Imbalance from 1971-2020 from von Schuckmann et al. (2023)

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More from @LeonSimons8

Mar 16
NASA: Global Sea Level Rise increased more than expected in 2024.

0.59 cm might not sound like much, but 2/3rds of that was due to thermal ocean expansion.

Which takes about 50 times more heat to increase sea levels than melting land-ice does!
1/ Image
Ice melt: ~1.5 ZJ = 1 cm
Ocean heat: ~73 ZJ = 1 cm

We can use this to get a rough indication of Earth's Energy Imbalance in 2024:

(0.59 cm * 2 / 3 * 73 ZJ) + (0.59 cm * (1 / 3) * 1.5 ZJ) = about 29 ZJ of heat to increase sea levels by 0.59 cm.

Which is +1.80 W/m² globaly!

2/ Image
This shows the acceleration of Ocean Heat Content increase from models (SSP) and observations.

The orange Hakuba et al. (2021) bar shows OHC increase determined from rising sea levels ('Geodetic').

Like NASA CERES satellite data, its best estimate is out of range of models.
3/ Image
Read 5 tweets
Feb 4
Global Warming Has Accelerated
Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?
[No!]

Notes from the presentation of this groundbreaking new paper by James Hansen (@DrJamesEHansen) et al. (2025), with leading climate scientists:

🧵
1/Image
@DrJamesEHansen Global warming has accelerated, which can't be explained by natural variability Image
@DrJamesEHansen The anthropogenic forcings are greenhouse gases and aerosols.

Aerosols are likely understimated by the IPCC Image
Read 46 tweets
Jan 27
Fossil fuels contain sulphur, which is released when burned. Scientists have known about the cooling effect of sulphur for decades.

This partially hides greenhouse gas warming.

But the scale of cooling and the decoupling of CO₂ and SO₂ emissions has been underestimated Image
As more and more clean air regulations came into effect from the 1960s onward, CO₂ and sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emissions gradually decoupled.

SO₂ emissions reached a global peak around 1980:
academic.oup.com/bioscience/art…Image
@WilliamJRipple This scatter plot clearly shows the decoupling between CO₂ and SO₂: Image
Read 14 tweets
Dec 29, 2024
🌊🌡️📈
The North Atlantic Ocean is not cooling back down.

The baseline has shifted.

We'll discuss this and more later today on Climate Chat. Image
2024 even broke the extreme Sea Surface Temperature record of 2023: Image
Unprecedented: Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 16, 2024
The Atlantic Ocean used to transport about 500,000,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat northward.

This will decrease by ~30% in OUR lifetimes.

What does that mean?

I think the main problem with climate change is that our tiny brains are incapable of comprehending it.
I tried to cover the basic AMOC maths here:

patreon.com/posts/10867891…
Read 4 tweets
Nov 22, 2024
🌊🌡📈 = 🦠📉

Plankton may not survive global warming, with "devastating effects"

🚨Plankton is at the basis of the ocean food web!
🚨Plankton sequesters carbon & releases oxygen!
🚨Plankton keeps the planet cool by creating cloud condensation nuclei! Image
Image
Image
Image
This is one of the most worrying studies I've seen in a long time.

And I come across a lot of worrying studies.
oceanographicmagazine.com/news/plankton-…
The ocean are warming extremely fast Image
Image
Read 7 tweets

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