We May Have a Problem With Low Albedo

While our poorly equipped Secretary of Defense, Little Peter Hegseth is concerned about testing our military for low testosterone, there is another measurement to which this this country should be paying more attention.  It seems we are suffering from both low and dropping albedo. 

I will pause here while someone tells Little Peter and his confused boss that “albedo” does not refer to levels or effects of testosterone. 

For those of you who have never had the fun of a class on meteorology, the word albedo rhymes with speedo.  [Oh, there goes Peter again—he starts to hop around and giggle the minute he thinks of men in speedos.] Albedo refers to the amount of light Earth reflects into space.  It is measured on a scale from 0 to 1.  Zero means you absorb all light (like a black hood on a car); 1 means you reflect all light (like a field of fresh, icy snow).  As anyone who has rested their hand on the surface of a black car standing in the sun all day can tell you, light energy equals heat energy. 

The earth should be a black body, that is, it naturally wants to absorb and reflect light in equal amounts, neither gaining nor losing heat.  Hence the term “black body.”  It has nothing to do with the color black, it is a physics thing, the absence of accumulated heat.  Yet we all know that the earth is not without residual heat.  Our albedo is usually about 0.3.  Why?   Because we have an atmosphere, a surrounding blanket of air that bends light waves both as they come in and go out, reflecting both light and heat back to the surface.  This allows life on this planet.  High albedos, whether they are created by white roofs or ice-covered seas, keep things cool; by contrast, when albedos are low, the incoming energy stays here on Earth, raising the planet’s surface temperatures.

Careful and continuous satellite measurements of Earth’s albedo have been taken for decades. They show albedo is falling with surprising speed. Remember, low albedo means rising heat.  The oceans which are responsible for most of the sunshine’s absorption, have been accumulating much more heat as a result.  Those increased ocean temperatures are transferred to the atmosphere, blown over the land, and are heating things up for us throughout the Norther Hemisphere.  Have you felt it?  Of course you have.  So have the animals, plants and insects that live on this planet and are following the heat from south to north.  For example, the screwworm was native to tropical and subtropical South America until recently. 

The people who measure albedo are both fascinated and appalled at the same time.  The earth is heating up faster than any of the scientists anticipated.  The more the albedo approaches zero, the more it feeds on itself.  To quote a writer on this subject from the Economist, “Cole Porter had it right. It is too darn hot.”  This does not need to be an anecdotal observation.  The data is there, numbers that cannot be bent to any ideology or prejudice, let alone political expediency.  Less than two weeks ago, on July 14^th, the surface temperature of our tropical and mid-latitude oceans was higher than on any other July 14^th in recorded history.  Nor was this an aberration.  The same statement is made about every other day in July—and most of the days in June as well.  It’s too damn hot! 

While we were worrying about greenhouse gases, the falling Albedo snuck up on us.  It is not something we anticipated because our climate is a machine of many wonderful parts.  It is a complex problem and here is where our present government is failing us.

Our current administration seems terribly afraid of scientific rigor.  They do not question it with facts of their own, they simply reject what their minds can’t assimilate.  This speaks to insecurity, not intelligence.  So, while little Peter obsesses about whose testosterone is bigger, I will worry about why our albedo is edging downward.  Because zero is way too low.  

Worry about what really matters and keep the faith.