by Daniel Brouse

Simplified Introduction

🌎 Earth’s Energy Imbalance

Climate change can be understood in one deceptively simple equation:

ENERGY IN − ENERGY OUT = ENERGY ACCUMULATING

Earth has been accumulating excess energy for decades. Most of that excess heat—roughly 90%—is going into the oceans.

What matters now is not just that Earth is out of balance, but that the imbalance itself is changing.

The recent acceleration in Earth’s energy imbalance raises an important question:

Are we moving from a relatively steady warming system toward a climate system increasingly driven by interacting feedbacks?

Ice loss. Clouds. Water vapor. Ocean heat. Carbon sinks.

When these systems interact, the climate response can become increasingly nonlinear.

ACCELERATING ENERGY IMBALANCE = ACCELERATING CLIMATE CHANGE

The simplest way to understand global warming may be to stop looking only at the thermometer—and start looking at the energy.

Read the full paper:

The Energy Imbalance (EEI)

A simple way to understand climate change and global warming is through Earth’s energy balance—or, more precisely, the growing lack of balance known as Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI).

Earth’s climate is governed by a fundamental exchange: energy arrives primarily from the Sun, while Earth returns energy to space as reflected sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation. When incoming and outgoing energy are equal over the long term, the planet is approximately in energy balance. When more energy enters the Earth system than leaves it, the difference is stored within the climate system, producing warming.

The Basic Energy Equation

There are two fundamental pathways involved in Earth’s energy budget:

1. Energy enters and leaves.
   Sunlight brings energy into the Earth system, while reflected sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation carry energy back into space.
2. Energy enters and is temporarily stored.
   Some of the incoming energy remains within the Earth system as heat. It warms the oceans, land, and atmosphere and melts snow and ice. Today, roughly 90% of the excess energy associated with the imbalance is stored in the ocean.

The important point is that energy cannot simply disappear. If less energy leaves the Earth system than enters it, the difference accumulates somewhere within the system.

From Balance to Imbalance

For thousands of years before large-scale industrialization, Earth’s climate system fluctuated around a long-term energy balance. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, however, human activities increasingly altered that balance.

The primary driver is the buildup of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. These gases reduce the rate at which Earth can emit infrared energy to space. As a result, more energy remains in the Earth system.

This does not mean that every year must be warmer than the preceding year. Natural variability—including El Niño and La Niña—can temporarily redistribute energy between the ocean and atmosphere and produce substantial year-to-year fluctuations. But over longer periods, a persistent positive EEI means that the Earth system continues accumulating energy.

The Imbalance Is Increasing

The remarkable development is not simply that Earth has a positive energy imbalance. The rate of energy accumulation has increased.

NASA and NOAA observations combining CERES satellite measurements with ocean observations found that Earth’s energy imbalance approximately doubled between the first decade of the 21st century and the 2005–2019 period. A 2024 observational assessment likewise found that CERES measured an increase from approximately 0.5 ± 0.2 W/m² during 2000–2009 to 1.0 ± 0.2 W/m² during 2010–2019.

The increase was not simply a matter of more greenhouse gases trapping infrared radiation. The CERES analysis found that absorbed solar radiation increased by about 0.9 W/m², while outgoing longwave radiation increased by about 0.4 W/m², partially offsetting that additional absorbed solar energy.

That distinction is important.

The Earth system can become more energetically unbalanced through changes in both:

• how much solar energy is absorbed, and
• how much infrared energy escapes to space.

Why the Post-2020 Period Matters

The years since 2020 have attracted particular scientific attention because several factors have combined to produce unusually large changes in Earth’s radiation budget.

One important contributor is the sharp reduction in sulfur emissions from international shipping following the IMO 2020 regulations. Sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight and can brighten clouds, producing a cooling influence. Their reduction therefore allows more solar radiation to reach and remain within the Earth system.

A 2024 modeling study estimated a global effective radiative forcing from IMO 2020 of approximately +0.14 W/m², primarily through aerosol-cloud interactions. The study estimated that the regulation could contribute about 0.046°C of additional global warming during 2020–2029, while emphasizing that other factors are required to explain the exceptional warmth of 2023.

This is significant, but it should not be interpreted as meaning that shipping regulations alone caused the recent surge in Earth’s energy imbalance.

The climate system is responding simultaneously to greenhouse-gas forcing, aerosol changes, clouds, water vapor, surface albedo, ocean circulation, volcanic activity, and internal variability.

A Rapidly Changing Radiation Budget

CERES observations provide direct measurements of changes in Earth’s radiation budget from space. The data show substantial changes in both absorbed solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation.

The year 2023 was particularly unusual. Global annual mean absorbed solar radiation was about 1.75 W/m² above the CERES reference climatology, while outgoing longwave radiation was about 0.85 W/m² above the reference. The resulting annual mean net radiation anomaly was approximately +0.90 W/m².

NASA has also reported that 2023 produced exceptionally large anomalies in absorbed solar radiation, with values exceeding the 90% confidence interval for much of March through September. The exceptionally large absorbed-solar and outgoing-longwave anomalies continued into early 2024.

These observations demonstrate something important:

Earth’s energy budget is not static. It is changing.

And the changes involve multiple interacting components of the climate system.

Energy Imbalance and Climate Feedbacks

This is where the concept of climate feedback becomes important.

An initial warming can trigger changes that alter the amount of energy entering or leaving the Earth system. Some of those changes amplify the original warming.

Examples include:

• Water vapor: Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas.
• Ice and snow: Melting reduces Earth’s reflectivity, allowing more sunlight to be absorbed.
• Clouds: Changes in cloud amount, altitude, composition, and properties can alter both reflected sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation.
• Ocean warming: The ocean absorbs most of the excess energy, affecting circulation, evaporation, sea level, and atmospheric processes.
• Carbon-cycle feedbacks: Warming and changing environmental conditions can alter the ability of terrestrial and oceanic systems to absorb carbon.

These feedbacks do not create energy from nothing. Rather, they change the pathways through which energy moves through the Earth system.

That distinction is crucial.

A feedback can cause the Earth to absorb more solar energy or retain more infrared energy, increasing the rate at which the existing energy imbalance grows.

The Energy Accumulation Is Enormous

The units used to measure EEI—watts per square meter—can make the imbalance sound deceptively small.

For example, 1.0 W/m² means that, averaged across the entire surface of Earth, approximately one additional joule of energy is accumulating every second for every square meter.

Across the entire planet, even a 1.0 W/m² imbalance corresponds to roughly 510 terawatts of continuous power.

At an imbalance of 1.45 W/m², the corresponding rate would be roughly 740 terawatts.

That is an extraordinary amount of energy.

The comparison can be expressed another way. Using the approximate energy yield of the Hiroshima bomb, an EEI of 1.45 W/m² corresponds to an energy accumulation rate on the order of 11 Hiroshima-scale explosions every second.

The important point is not the metaphor itself. It is the scale of the energy involved.

The Earth Is Not Just Getting Warmer

Temperature is only one visible consequence of the energy imbalance.

The accumulated energy is distributed throughout the Earth system. It:

• heats the oceans,
• warms the land,
• warms the atmosphere,
• melts glaciers and ice sheets,
• reduces sea ice,
• expands seawater,
• increases evaporation,
• intensifies the hydrological cycle,
• and contributes to changes throughout the climate system.

NASA’s CERES program estimates that about 93% of the current excess energy is stored in the ocean, illustrating why ocean heat content is such an important measure of Earth’s changing energy budget.

This is why looking only at surface temperature can obscure part of the story.

The climate system is an energy system.

Surface temperature is one measurement of that system—not the system itself.

The EEI Timeline

Near balance → emerging imbalance → acceleration → post-2020 surge → nonlinear feedback phase

The observational record therefore supports a clear long-term conclusion: Earth’s energy imbalance has increased substantially over recent decades.

The precise attribution of the most recent changes remains an active area of research.

The Bigger Picture

The simplest way to understand global warming is not to begin with a thermometer.

Begin with energy.

Earth receives energy from the Sun. Earth emits energy back into space. Greenhouse gases, clouds, aerosols, ice, water vapor, and other components of the climate system influence how much energy enters, how much leaves, and how quickly the system responds.

When the equation is balanced, Earth’s average climate can remain relatively stable.

When the equation is persistently unbalanced, energy accumulates.

And when the rate of that accumulation changes, the climate system changes with it.

Global warming is therefore not merely a temperature problem. It is an energy-accounting problem.

The central question is simple:

How much energy is entering the Earth system, how much is leaving, and how rapidly is the difference changing?

That difference is Earth’s Energy Imbalance.

And it is one of the most fundamental measurements of a changing climate.

by Daniel Brouse

Indonesia: Still Burning — When Wildfire Becomes a Climate Feedback

Indonesia’s wildfire carbon dioxide emissions surged to the highest level in the world in early September 2026, driven by an intense El Niño season and extreme drought.

As reported earlier this month, Indonesia is experiencing a dangerous convergence of climate stress: extreme drought, human land-use change, and increasingly intense wildfires across Sumatra and Borneo.

See: https://www.kingarthur.com/global_warming/Climate-Energy-Orangutans.html

Record Emissions

According to the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, as reported through Fire Emissions Watch, Indonesian fires released approximately 19.7 million metric tons of CO₂ between September 1 and September 7, 2026.

That represented more than one-third of global wildfire CO₂ emissions during that period and surpassed Russia.

The significance goes beyond the immediate emissions. Indonesia contains some of the world’s largest tropical peatlands—vast stores of carbon accumulated over thousands of years. When these peatlands dry out and burn, they can release carbon that has been locked away for centuries or millennia.

Regional Haze and Health Impacts

The consequences are not confined to the fire zones.

Smoke haze has spread across neighboring countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, producing hazardous air-quality conditions. The resulting disruption has included school closures, remote learning affecting more than a million students, and widespread air-quality warnings.

What begins as a regional wildfire can therefore become a regional atmospheric event—with consequences for human health, transportation, education, agriculture, and ecosystems.

Orangutans Under Threat

Critically endangered orangutans are also facing an escalating survival crisis.

Intense wildfires are destroying and fragmenting habitat across Borneo and Sumatra. Extreme drought makes forests and peatlands more vulnerable to ignition, while the combination of drought, land-use change, and El Niño conditions can transform individual fires into large-scale ecological disasters.

For orangutans, the loss is not simply the burning of individual trees. It is the destruction and fragmentation of an already limited habitat.

When Wildfire Becomes a Climate Feedback

The Indonesian fires illustrate a dangerous climate feedback loop: warming and climate variability can create conditions that produce more wildfire, while the resulting fires release additional greenhouse gases and destroy carbon-absorbing ecosystems.

In other words:

Warming → drought → wildfire → CO₂ release + carbon-sink loss → more warming

Indonesia’s tropical peatlands make this feedback particularly important.

1. The Peatland Carbon Bomb

The process:

Peatlands consist of thick, waterlogged layers of partially decomposed plant material. Because decomposition is slowed under waterlogged conditions, enormous quantities of carbon can accumulate over long periods.

During severe drought, such as that associated with strong El Niño conditions, water tables can fall and peat can dry out.

The feedback:

Once dry, peat can ignite and continue smoldering underground. Unlike an ordinary surface forest fire, a peat fire can persist beneath the surface and release enormous quantities of stored carbon.

That produces a potentially powerful feedback:

Drought → dried peat → peat fire → CO₂ release → increased atmospheric warming → greater drought risk → more peat vulnerability

The critical point is that peat fires can release not only carbon from recently grown vegetation but also carbon accumulated over much longer periods.

2. Destruction of the Rainforest Carbon Sink

The process:

Healthy tropical forests function as major carbon sinks. Through photosynthesis, trees and other vegetation remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and store carbon in biomass and soils.

The feedback:

Wildfire can kill trees, degrade soils, and fragment the forest canopy. The loss of living vegetation reduces the ecosystem’s capacity to remove atmospheric CO₂.

At the same time, dead and damaged vegetation decomposes or burns, returning additional carbon to the atmosphere.

A forest that once removed carbon from the atmosphere can therefore become a source of greenhouse-gas emissions following severe disturbance.

The feedback becomes:

Forest loss → reduced CO₂ uptake + additional emissions → higher atmospheric CO₂ → greater warming

This is a critical distinction: wildfire does not merely add emissions. It can simultaneously remove part of the natural system that would otherwise absorb those emissions.

3. Regional Weather and Surface-Albedo Changes

Wildfires can also modify the physical environment.

Dense smoke and aerosol plumes can spread across enormous areas, reducing incoming sunlight at the surface while altering atmospheric heating. Meanwhile, burned landscapes have different surface characteristics from intact forests, including changes in surface reflectivity, vegetation, soil moisture, and evaporation.

These changes can disrupt local and regional energy and water cycles.

The resulting effects are complex and can vary with atmospheric conditions, but prolonged smoke and vegetation loss can alter evaporation, convection, rainfall patterns, and the persistence of dry conditions.

When drought delays the return of heavy rainfall, peat fires can continue burning underground for extended periods.

The Climate Feedback Loop

The Indonesian situation can be summarized as a sequence:

The Bigger Picture

The Indonesian fires demonstrate why climate change cannot be understood solely as a gradual increase in average temperature.

Climate energy moves through interconnected Earth systems.

A period of extreme heat and drought can trigger wildfire. Wildfire can release stored carbon. The same wildfire can destroy vegetation that would otherwise absorb atmospheric CO₂. Smoke and land-surface changes can alter regional energy and water cycles. The resulting environmental changes can increase the vulnerability of the system to the next extreme event.

That is a feedback.

And when multiple feedbacks begin operating simultaneously, the climate system can become increasingly difficult to treat as a simple linear progression.

Indonesia isn’t just burning.

A climate feedback is burning with it.

by Daniel Brouse

Methane feedback emissions are accelerating: methane emissions from climate feedbacks have shown an accelerated, record-breaking surge since around 2007, with a massive spike since 2020.

Global Methane & Climate Feedback Trends (2000–Present)

The 2026 data highlights a critical new development in atmospheric methane monitoring: while the extreme record-shattering growth rates seen in 2020–2021 have stabilized, total global methane concentrations have reached an all-time high, heavily sustained by strong natural feedback loops.

Ultimately, the data shows that human mitigation efforts are currently in a dead heat against escalating climate-driven natural feedbacks.