Far Infrared: The New Driver Behind Arctic Warming

A team of scientists have identified far infrared energy as a new driver behind Arctic warming and melting sea ice in the region, according to recent research.

Although it accounts for about half the energy emitted by the Earth's surface, researchers hadn't previously thought to consider the long-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum, maybe because it's invisible to the naked eye.

But a team from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory decided to focus on this unexplored topic, and found that far-infrared surface emissivity in fact has a much bigger impact on the polar climate than today's models indicate.

"Based on our findings, we recommend that more efforts be made to measure far-infrared surface emissivity. These measurements will help climate models better simulate the effects of this phenomenon on Earth's climate," lead author Daniel Feldman said in a statement.

The far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum spans wavelengths that are between 15 and 100 microns (a micron is one-millionth of a meter). In comparison, visible light includes wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). It's far-infrared energy emitted by the Earth's oceans and sea ice that help to balance out incoming solar energy.

However, open oceans like the Arctic Ocean aren't as good at their job in this respect as researchers previously believed. Using a global atmosphere climate model called the Community Earth System Model, Feldman and his colleagues created simulations that indicate far-infrared surface emissions have the biggest impact on the climates of arid high-latitude and high-altitude regions.