Earth's Energy Budget Remained out of Balance Despite Unusually Low Solar Activity, Study Finds

[Vergent]

http://www.scienceda...20130172611.htm

[donsutherland1]

For those who are interested, the complete paper is now online. The paper can be found at: http://pubs.giss.nas...Hansen_etal.pdf

Some excerpts from the paper:

A verdict is provided by the ocean heat uptake found by von Schuckmann and Le Traon (2011), 0.41 W m^-2 for 2005-2010, averaged over the planet. Adding the small terms for heat uptake in the deeper ocean, warming of the ground and atmosphere, and melting of ice, the net planetary energy imbalance exceeded +0.5 W ^m-2 during the solar minimum.

The strong positive energy imbalance during the solar minimum, and the consistency of the planet’s energy imbalance with expectations based on estimated human-made climate forcing, together constitute a smoking gun, a fundamental verification that human-made climate forcing is the dominant forcing driving global climate change. Positive net forcing even during the solar minimum assures that global warming will be continuing on decadal time scales.