TITLE:
How to Heat a Planet? Impact of Anthropogenic Landscapes on Earth’s Albedo and Temperature
AUTHORS:
Mark Healey
KEYWORDS:
Earth Albedo, Anthropogenic Landscape Changes, Heat Fluxes, Earth’s Energy Budget, Glacial Cycle, Gaia Links
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.11 No.6,
June
30,
2020
ABSTRACT: Today anthropogenic climate change is underway and predicted future global
temperatures vary significantly. However, the drivers of current climate change
and their links to Earth’s natural glacial cycle have yet to be fully resolved.
Currently, many on a local level understand, and are exposed to, the heat energy
generated by what’s referred to as the urban heat island effect (UHI), whereby natural
flora with higher albedos is replaced by manmade urban areas with lower albedos. This heat effect is not
constrained to these regions and all anthropogenic surfaces with lower albedos need
to be studied and quantified as the accumulated additional heat energy (infrared
energy) is trapped within Earth’s atmosphere and could affect the Earth on a planetary
level. Deployed satellites have detected critical changes to Earth’s albedo to lower
levels, however the cause and impact of these changes have yet to be fully understood
and incorporated into Global Circulation models (GCMs). Here it’s shown that industrialization
of anthropogenic landscape practices of the past century has displaced millions
of square kilometres of naturally high albedo grasslands with lower albedo agricultural
landscapes. Utilising a fundamental Energy Balance Model, (EBM) it’s demonstrated
these specific changes have generated vast amounts of additional heat energy which
is trapped by the atmosphere, transferred and stored within the oceans of the Earth
as shown in Figure 1. The total additional heat energy accumulated over the
preceding 110 years correlates to that required to warm the Earth to the levels
seen to date, altering Earth’s overall energy budget. This energy will continue
to accumulate and warm the Earth to a predicted 1.60 ± 0.20 Celsius by 2050 over
1910 levels. These findings are independent of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
additions and are further validated by predicting Earth’s temperature and albedo
at the last glacial maxima, suggesting that an albedo cycle aligned to Gaia theory
is the primary driver of Earth’s natural climate cycle.