With these factors in mind, scientists at the Big Bear Solar Observatory studied how Earth’s light has fluctuated since 1998.
JAKARTA – Scientists at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Southern California issued a research paper concluding that Earth is reflecting less and less light due to the effects of climate change.
Quoted from Space, the paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is the result of observations over the last two decades.
From a phenomenon called ‘earthshine’, which is light reflected by Earth onto the surface of the dark side of the moon, combined with satellite observations of Earth’s reflectivity (albedo), and also the brightness of the sun.
Geographical conditions in certain parts of the Earth, also affect the amount of reflected light. For example, the ocean will reflect very little light. On the other hand, land can be twice as much.
In addition, the clouds above the Earth can also reflect about half of the sunlight that hits them. And snow and ice reflect most of the light they receive.
With these factors in mind, scientists at the Big Bear Solar Observatory studied how Earth’s light has fluctuated since 1998. Observing the changes from day to day, to month, year and decade.
They also combined the data with observations from NASA’s Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) projects, which have been in operation since 1997. With instruments on a number of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites.
Using these two data sets, they found that over the span of two full decades, the amount of light reflected off the Earth dropped by about 0.5%. With most of the decline occurring in the last three years.
During the same period of time, the researchers also observed the brightness of the sun, which went through two periods of maximum activity and one period of calm during the study.
As a result, it was found that there was no significant decrease in reflectance, which affects the less reflection reflected by the Earth.
The Big Bear Solar Observatory researchers finally concluded, that changes in the amount of light reflected by the Earth occurred due to factors originating from changes in Earth itself.
The bad news. This happens because the incoming sunlight is not reflected back into space by the Earth (trapped in the Earth system). This will have implications for the climate in the future. Or potentially increase the rate of climate change that has already occurred.
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