How to Heat a Planet? Impact of Anthropogenic Landscapes on Earth’s Albedo and Temperature

Today anthropogenic climate change is underway and predicted future global temperatures vary significantly. However, the drivers of current climate change and their links to Earth’s natural glacial cycle have yet to be fully re-solved. Currently, many on a local level understand, and are exposed to, the heat energy generated by what’s referred to as the urban heat island effect (UHI), whereby natural flora with higher albedos is replaced by manmade urban areas with lower albedos. This heat effect is not constrained to these regions and all anthropogenic surfaces with lower albedos need to be studied and quantified as the accumulated additional heat energy (infrared energy) is trapped within Earth’s atmosphere and could affect the Earth on a planetary level. Deployed satellites have detected critical changes to Earth’s albedo to lower levels, however the cause and impact of these changes have yet to be fully understood and incorporated into Global Circulation models (GCMs). Here it’s shown that industrialization of anthropogenic landscape practices of the past century has displaced millions of square kilometres of naturally high albedo grasslands with lower albedo agricultural landscapes. Utilising a fundamental Energy Balance Model, (EBM) it’s demonstrated these specific changes have generated vast amounts of additional heat energy which is trapped by the atmosphere, transferred and stored within the oceans of the Earth as shown in Figure 1. The total additional heat energy accumulated over the preceding 110 years correlates to that required to warm the Earth to the levels seen to date, altering Earth’s overall energy budget. This energy will continue to accumulate and warm the Earth to a predicted 1.60 ± 0.20 Celsius by 2050 over 1910 levels. These findings are independent of anthropogenic Greenhouse


Introduction
Anthropogenic landscapes have been around for millennia with mankind domesticating crops in abundant quantities to realize and exploit these new sustainable agricultural methods [1]. These practices have been overwhelmingly beneficial for humanity. Today, Earth's surface is vastly different to that of the early 1900's [2]. Currently anthropogenic landscapes are the largest disruptive development to the planet's ecosystem, with over 52 ± 13 million square kilometres (50%) [3] of habitable land converted to agriculture/urban areas. This equates to 33% of the Earth's land surface. Many first think of deforestation as the major alteration when it comes to land clearing changes in the last century.
However, it's been estimated up to 90% [4] of the Worlds Grasslands have suffered the greatest clearing and this has occurred at a faster rate than forests due to grassland's general topography, annual rainfall, rich dark fertile soils [5] and ease of conversion to cropland. As it stands, these areas are one of the least protected regions of the world [5]. The calculated conversion ratio between grassland to cropland and forest to cropland is estimated at (60%:40%) [2]. With the onset of industrialization, today, most grasslands have been converted into agricultural landscapes. The transformation of the World's natural landscapes to agricultural land has increased by 6.7 ± 1.6 million square kilometres within the last 110 years (Figure 2), and now estimated at 15.0 ± 3.5 million square kilometres (1/10 of the Earth's land area) [2]. The juxtapose heat flux or albedo properties of these altered flora surfaces has been overlooked in the causation climate change debate.  While much attention has been focused on the correlated anthropogenic CO 2 , (Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG)) increases, these increases have lagged temperature rise and questions remain about the overall causation mechanism [6] and have marred the study of other climate drivers. Without fully accounting for anthropogenic landscape heat effects over the past 110 years, the conclusion drawn to date maybe casuistic. At present there is no alternate, credible theory to readily explain and account for the energy necessary to raise the global temperature by the levels seen. Furthermore, using the fundamental laws of thermodynamics encompassing energy conservation, additional accumulated heat energy generated from the removal & conversion of 4.02 ± 1.6 million square kilometres of natural grasslands with high albedo properties to newly created anthropogenic darker agricultural landscapes with lower albedos, can be identified as the main contributor and causation of climate change [7].
The word Albedo (al-bee-doh) refers to a measure of how much light energy is reflected by a surface, or stays as short-wave energy, while the remaining amount is absorbed and transformed to longwave energy, i.e. heat/infrared radiation. Surfaces that appear whiter reflect most of the light energy that is radiated upon the surface and therefore has a high albedo, while darker surfaces absorbs/transforms most of the light energy into longwave, heat energy, indicating a lower albedo. The albedo scale is between 0 for full absorption to 1 for full ref-  Figure 2) [2]. To date, these changes have not been incorporated into GCMs as it has been assumed that such changes do not play a significant role in Earth's overall heat flux budget [10]. This measured change to heat fluxes and additional build-up of heat energy is correct for short durations, however over decades and centuries the accumulated energy has significant differences. The natural grasslands converted to grafted anthropogenic agricultural croplands have been judged to exhibit the exact same heat flux properties in all GCMs [11]. While deforestation and clearing of the world's forested areas with associated lower albedos 0.142 ± 0.011 to make way for agricultural land with higher albedos of 0.163 ± 0.013 have partially offset the temperature rise in this time frame [10], these areas are less favoured croplands as they are documented to be less fertile with lower productivity to that of grassland/cropland conversions [6]. These cooling changes and heat fluxes have been recognized and accounted for in the GCMs currently used [11].
It's been further recognized that, changes to surface albedos are powerful climate drivers of local, regional land areas and ultimately Earth's climate [12]. Moreover, concerns remain for the arctic region as the high albedo (0.60 ±.10) sea ice is slowly transformed to deep ocean low albedo (0.08 ± 0.02) properties due to the shorter winter season caused by the warmer ocean temperatures. Additionally, fires and burnt areas of the world are seemingly increasing in frequency and area and while these are not directly linked to causing global warming, they also contribute to lower albedo terrain. Both alterations will only further exacerbate the warming currently underway due to the positive feedbacks, however, have not been considered in the accumulated heat energy calculations performed herein.
In real terms additional worldwide cropland areas (6.7 ± 1.6 million square kilometres) has roughly increased by 90% of the area of Australia (7.6 million square kilometres) within 110 years. The full impact of these anthropogenic landscape changes has only recently been introduced into some land surface models (LSM) and have been an area of consideration when it comes to the associated net energy flux impacts to the Earth's energy budget [4] [14]. While at the same time other research has touted increased albedo/reflectance changes with lower heat fluxes or new geo-engineering practices to cropland areas as a major way to fully mitigate the current global warming trend currently being experienced [15]. Ultimately, global warming is dictated by the iron-clad laws of thermodynamics. If the additional heat energy is more than the previous year the Earth warms. In reverse, the Earth cools and if the heat energy stays the same, the Earth's temperature remains unchanged.

Methodology
In the following calculations the Earth is considered using an Energy Balance Model (EBM). EBMs do not simulate the climate, but instead consider the balance between the energy entering the Earth's atmosphere from the sun and the heat released back out to space and are the foundation and basis upon which To heat the Planet, you must essentially heat the oceans that stores 93% of the energy [19]. Due to the immense size of the ocean, the epipelagic zone or top 150 ± 50 meters (5.4 × 10 7 ± 1.8 × 10 7 cubic kilometres) of the ocean can mix with the atmosphere, with deeper parts taking thousands of years to completely overturn and absorb additional energy and increase in temperature. Furthermore, it's been estimated that the oceans take 2640 years to fully overturn [20].
When considering the energy impacts of the past 110 years, this equates to 4% or the dawn of atmospheric atomic testing, this completely removes any atmospheric cooling effects that may have been experienced at this time period [21].
The modelled temperature simulations (1910-2050) charts can also be expressed as additional accumulated energy contained within the oceans/atmosphere, and NOAA currently measures this at 1.6 × 10 23 Joules above 1990 levels [22].  To start this series of temperature calculations, an average sea depth of 100 m or 3.6 × 10 19 Litres will be set. Utilizing the heat capacity of saltwater (3.89 Joules per gram per Kelvin or 3890 Joules per kilogram per Kelvin), this equates to 1.45 × 10 23 Joules per Kelvin. Now applying the laws of thermodynamics, once the amount of accumulated additional heat energy reaches this figure the temperature of the Earth increases by 1-degree Kelvin or Celsius.
To continue the EBM calculations the following 7 assumptions are made: 1) The surface change for the averaged albedo difference of the converted land area (considering the cropping cycles) is constantly maintained year on year due to the same anthropogenic practices.
2) The area of the change is permanent, once the alteration has been initiated.
3) The amount of energy at the surface of the Earth is taken from the average surface energy of the planet obtained from Earth's Global Energy Budget figure, now estimated at 184.0 Watts per square meter [23]. 4) Energy reflected by clouds and the Atmosphere is constantly maintained at 79 Watts per square meter [23], throughout this time period This may indeed overestimate the contribution of clouds in the early 1900's. 5) Average sunlight per square meter of terrain is 12 hours per day or (43,200 seconds per day), 365 days per year.
6) The amount of energy required to heat the Earth, 1 Celsius or Kelvin is estimated at 1.45 × 10 23 Joules based on 100 m ocean depth (3.6 × 10 7 cubic kilometres).
7) The remaining of Earth's radiation budget quantities and annual mean where c is the specific heat of the material from which an object is made.

Results
The first series of modelled temperature calculations derived from Equations (1)-(3) are performed using 10%, 15% and 20% reduction on the anthropogenic albedo surface alteration converting from grasslands to croplands for the entire introduced 6.7 million square kilometres anthropogenic area, with no accounting for the forest to cropland conversions resulting in a (100%:0%) ratio. making these highly probable they are correlated. The total energy (Joules) is plotted on the secondary y axis in Figure 4(e). An additional temperature chart is constructed, shifting the resulting modelled temperatures from 1946 to 1981 thereby excluding the Atmospheric atomic testing years; resulting in Figures 5(a)-(c). These temperature charts can be used to predict the future global atmospheric/ocean mean temperatures and are compared to the 1910 adjusted NOAA temperature chart 5(i). To date, Earth's global temperature has risen 1.33 Celsius above 1910 levels, (an increase of 0.25 Celsius above the normally quoted 1880 temperature increase of 1.08 Celsius), here it's shown that additional accumulated heat energy generated from darker anthropogenic landscape changes totalling 2.28 × 10 23 Joules from 1910, will continue increasing Earth's temperature but not exceeding 1.60 ± 0.20 Celsius by 2050 as shown in Figure 5 (b).

Discussion
While there are some inherent errors that exist within the calculations performed, from the tessellated grafted anthropogenic surface area changes, associated land and cloud albedos and resulting heat fluxes that culminates in a ±0.2 Celsius estimated error, these are outweighed by the basic, fundamental laws of thermodynamics employed as well as the reasonable, logical assumptions made in the semiempirical calculations performed within the EBM. This combined with the validation calculations predicting Earth's temperature and albedo at the last glacial maxima, shows how large-scale albedo changes can drive the planetary temperatures experienced in Earth's past, and may indeed be aligned to an Earth albedo cycle associated with Gaia theory [25]. Looking closely at the recorded NOAA global temperatures from 1910 to present and comparing them to the modelled temperatures seen in Figure 6(b), the modelled results appear are on the lower side of the actual NOAA global temperatures, and only 10 of the 110 of the NOAA global temperatures yearly results fall outside the predicted error results. This stems from the conservative estimates for the anthropogenic induced heat fluxes and total converted areas utilized. While lower latent heat in the early 1900's may also contribute to additional heat energy entering the system due to reduced cloud formation and therefore less reflected energy resulting in higher transmission of energy reaching Earth's lowered albedo surfaces and ultimately transformed to additional International Journal of Geosciences heat energy. This would result in increased temperatures than otherwise modelled. Current research indicates the latent heat measurements have increased over the century, resulting in greater cloud formation and rainfall [26] [27]. However, from the results obtained by the two separate methods above, the heat fluxes used appear to be maintained and accurate, and within acceptable limits over the 110-year period.

Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper shows that utilising an EBM, the unintended additional accumulated heat energy as a consequence of all ALHE alterations, has year on year resulted in increased global average temperatures since 1910, except for the atmospheric atomic testing years . A Pearson's correlation of 0.97, as well as a paired t-test result of 1.6 × 10 −10 was calculated between these results and NOAA average global temperatures, indicating a strong correlation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law the Earth's average absorbed heat flux will increase by 5.88 Watts per square meter from 1910 to 2050, as an indirect result of Earth's TOA albedo decreasing from 0.3160 to 0.2987 over this timeframe. Without any contrary change, or off-setting, this additional accumulated heat energy totalling 2.29 × 10 23 Joules, will continue to enter Earth's system, warming the planet to a predicted temperature of 1.60 ± 0.20 Celsius above 1910 levels by 2050 and is independent of anthropogenic GHG increases. These findings should be closely studied and incorporated into more complex GCMs. If all global warming seen to date can be attributed to surface albedo changes, this gives rise to the question of whether surface albedo changes, may, in fact, have been a larger contributor to global temperature fluctuations seen in the distant past and therefore been the primary driver of natural climate change, i.e. Ice Ages/interglacial periods, and may indeed be aligned to an Earth albedo cycle associated with Gaia theory.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.