Does anyone know how much energy is required to change the temperature of Earth by 10 degrees?

Question

How much energy is needed to raise the temperature one degree?

Answer 1

More than all of can imagine. we control nothing. The sun, now there is the real problem.

Answer 2

A lot!!!!

Answer 3

We get enough energy from the sun every day to accomplish this. But we also radiate out into space about the same amount of energy.

The question then should be how much of a greenhouse effect would we need to raise our temperature by 1 degrees.

Again we have enough greenhouse effect to make this happen in large parts of the earth, just not all of it. And, when temperatures rise much above normal it will find an opportunity, a clear night sky, to radiate it out, and return to normal.

Answer 4

I don't think the question is answerable without lots of conditions.  There is the amount that the sun would take to raise it one degree but that might form clouds, reduce ice, increase CO2, etc.  You could theoretically raise it also by varying the greenhouse gas concentrations without any solar variance.

Answer 5

The sun has already heated my part of the planet by 15 C in the past ten hours.

Answer 6

I'll give it a quick and dirty estimate. I don't have time to look up things right now, so take it with a grain of salt.

If all other things remain constant (e.g. albedo effect doesn't change, etc.), then 1 W/m^2 of energy coming in to the planet would increase temperature by about 0.3 C.  So 10 C would require about 33.3 W/m^2.  Given the surface of our planet is about 5 x 10^14 m^2, that means it would take about 1.7 x 10^16 Watts or 1.7 x 10^7 gigaWatts.

Answer 7

Al Gore

Answer 8

Seriously it would take unimaginable amounts of green house gases over the course of maybe 150 years to create that huge degree change.

Answer 9

A whole Sun's worth to raise the temperature 10 degrees,

Just one molecule in a million of co2 per year for 100 years is enough to raise temperatures 1 degree over the century. (so we are told)

Answer 10

A !@$#load.   But then again the sun changes many tons of hydrogen to pure energy every second.   Just put a blanket over the earth to keep in the heat and it shouldn't take too long to trap a little extra heat in.   It warms up every morning as it is.