Scientists warn that climate change is darkening the Earth

ising ocean waters cause Earth’s brightness to decreaseit revealed

measurements of the planet’s light that illuminates the surface of the moon and from satellites.

The Earth now reflects about half a watt of light per square meter than it did 20 years ago, with most of the decline occurring in the last three years of ground-light data, according to the new. study Published in the magazine Geophysical Research Letters.

This is the equivalent of a 0.5% reduction in ground reflection, which reflects approx 30% of the sunlight that illuminates it.

“The fall of albedo came as a surprise to us when we analyzed the data for the last three years after 17 years of nearly flat albedo.“, She said Philip Good, a researcher at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and lead author of the new study, pointing to Earth-light data from 1998 to 2017 collected by the Big Bear Solar Observatory in

Southern California. When the most recent data was added to previous years, the opacity trend became apparent.

Two things affect the clear sunlight that reaches Earth: the brightness of the sun and the reflectivity of the planet.. The changes in Earth’s albedo that the researchers observed were not correlated with periodic changes in the brightness of the Sun, which means that changes in Earth’s reflection are caused by something on Earth.

Especially, There has been a decrease in low, bright and reflective clouds over the eastern Pacific Ocean in recent yearsaccording to satellite measurements made as part of the Earth’s Clouds and Radiant Energy System (CERES) project.

This is the same area. Off the western coasts of North and South America, where increases in sea surface temperatures have been recorded due to the reversal of a climate condition called the Pacific decadal oscillation, with possible links to global

climate change.