The Earth Energy Imbalance is back over 13 Hiroshimas per Second as of February, 2026.
Posted by wanton_wonton_@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 31 comments
Diaza_Kinutz@reddit
I'm sorry but Hiroshimas per second is a wild unit of measurement. I'm sure Japan loves it.
Vibrant-Shadow@reddit
That's a lot of energy.
Jovan_Knight005@reddit
It is a lot of it.
pegaunisusicorn@reddit
Why does the graph wiggle?:
Volcanic eruptions and aerosols do contribute, but they’re usually not the main driver of the short-term wiggles you’re seeing. The biggest source of year-to-year variability in EEI is ENSO — the El Niño/La Niña cycle. Here’s the rough breakdown of what’s making that line jump around:
ENSO (dominant short-term driver): During La Niña, the eastern tropical Pacific is cool, which actually traps more heat in the system (less outgoing longwave radiation to space, plus changes in cloud distribution). El Niño does the opposite — warm Pacific surface dumps more energy to space. The 2008–2010 dip and several other troughs line up with ENSO transitions.
Volcanic eruptions: Major stratospheric sulfate injections (Pinatubo-scale) absolutely tank EEI for 1–2 years. But there hasn’t been a Pinatubo-class eruption in this window. Hunga Tonga (2022) was unusual — it injected mostly water vapor, which is a warming agent, not the typical cooling.
Anthropogenic aerosols: Slower-moving but increasingly important. The IMO 2020 shipping fuel sulfur cap is widely suspected to be part of the recent jump — fewer reflective aerosols over shipping lanes means more absorbed sunlight. This is a “termination shock” effect that’s still being quantified.
Clouds: Huge wildcard. Small shifts in low cloud cover (especially marine stratocumulus) move EEI significantly, and a lot of cloud variability is internal/chaotic. Solar cycle: ~11-year sunspot cycle, but the amplitude is small (~0.1% TSI) — visible in the data but not dominant.
The recent surge toward 16+ HpS isn’t fully explained yet — it’s probably a combination of GHG accumulation, aerosol decline, ENSO state, and possibly emerging cloud feedbacks, and there’s active scientific debate about the relative weights.
Velocipedique@reddit
If images are worth a thousand words, this linked graph is worth a gazillion "Hiroshimas" towards understanding what is happening. We must, unfortunately sooner rather than later, start the painful journey toward the realities of Earth's natural balance by closing that ever increasing gap caused by the unprecedented speed we are heating the planet. justdean.substack.com/p/unprecedented-in-66-million-years
_nephilim_@reddit
So we're already on track to 5°C and beyond. I hope the billionaires enjoy their life in bunkers.
GloriousDawn@reddit
Super interesting article. There's one ghastly question remaining: what is the timeline for closing the gap to the thermal lag ? Are we talking decades or hundreds of years ?
Velocipedique@reddit
Only Mother nature knows!
TrickyProfit1369@reddit
Nice graph. It paints a very grim picture, even if we stopped emiting right now.
kitkats124@reddit
And that’s just the CO2 being over 430ppm, the CO2E of total GHG is closer to 600 even now, something like 560-570 ppm already with including methane, etc and other excess GHGs
johannesfranco13@reddit
What happened in 2002 to make it negative
haram_halal@reddit
9/11, a shit tin of flights cancelled globally.
fedfuzz1970@reddit
Cancellation of civilian air traffic for 72 hours resulted in a 2.3C (or so) increase of surface temps across the U.S. This due to absence of contrails which are reflective of sun's energy on the surface. I've always thought that was supportive of Hansen's theory of the effects of particulates on reflectivity and cloud formation.
shwhjw@reddit
Was expecting to see covid make a dent in the graph but I guess the feedback's too locked in.
Bandits101@reddit
Have a guess what the cornucopian’s say when confronted with that reality……First they want to blame, be it billionaires, capitalism, boomers or oil companies.
When they get over that, they say we must get off fossil fuels, plant trees, sequester CO2, build more renewables , go vegetarian and so on. They completely ignore or can’t grasp the enormity of our predicament.
I’m quite sure the 300 billion tonnes of annual melting ice sheets, shelves, glaciers and permafrost is unstoppable, considering the albedo loss and methane releases.
I guess people are committed to believing the lies, not questioning the ten year old Paris Accord (made in ignorance) agreement to limit warming to “less than 2 degrees 1750”.
I think we should have started planting a billion trees annually at about the year 1900….but you know humans and Jevons Paradox, we would simply have burned harder.
fedfuzz1970@reddit
Tipping points reached and some exceeded. Time for hoping is over; time for adapting, prepping and surviving is upon us.
Decloudo@reddit
Oh, so there is a term for that logical fallacy.
ga-co@reddit
My plus one said she was going to not rinse her dishes as much before putting them in the dishwasher. No matter how dirty those dishes are before they go in the dishwasher, her actions aren't getting us out of this mess... and even if 100% of the planet did what she's doing, we're still toast. At this point we should all just prepare, think about our reproductive choices, and try to enjoy life where we can.
NihiloZero@reddit
There's always hope! Ain't you ever seen Snowpiercer?!
wanton_wonton_@reddit (OP)
Source
Explainer: What are zettajoules – and what do they tell us about Earth’s energy imbalance?
Drew_Eckse@reddit
I don't understand the explanation, can someone summarize?
Sputnik-overdrive@reddit
Time to pour out some whiskey and smoke a big doobie, shits gunna get WILD this summer in northern hemisphere, hell it’s just turning May and wild fires are already rampaging across the US and Europe is getting very dry! Good luck all and peace ✌️
shwhjw@reddit
Oh crap it's May tomorrow, I need to prep.
Buffmclargehuge69420@reddit
I dont know what this means and why is there orange shit all over the graph
HassanAchievedIt@reddit
Just wave your MAGA flag and enjoy Champagne by the coast of Cali until reality hits and then its War at Home
wanton_wonton_@reddit (OP)
Maybe read the submission statement.
IKillZombies4Cash@reddit
That’s 11.3 million Hiroshimas per Scaramucci
ImSuperHelpful@reddit
2.5 million per Brittany/Jason marriage, for the pop culture crowd
ShadowPsi@reddit
I wonder if we'll run out of oil with a positive EROEI before we totally nuke the planet into a wasteland, or sometime after.
At least in the apocalypse, those who remain will be warm.
bipolarearthovershot@reddit
This is the part about climate the moderates don’t understand. This shit is in complete runaway
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/wanton_wonton_:
Source
Explainer: What are zettajoules – and what do they tell us about Earth’s energy imbalance?
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1szd6cl/the_earth_energy_imbalance_is_back_over_13/oj0v3lw/