NASA has issued a warning over Earth's alarming "energy imbalance" amid concerns over climate change.
In an official press release, a spokesperson for the space agency stated that Earth's positive energy imbalance (in which the planet traps more radiation than it releases) has approximately doubled between 2005-2019.
Employing ocean floats, and NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System satellites, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have discovered an "unprecedented" rise in sea temperatures.
Take a look at Greta Thunberg's impassioned climate change speech to world leaders in the video below:This collaborative study found that the doubled energy imbalance is partially the result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions trapping harmful solar radiation within our terrestrial atmosphere.
Along with increases in water vapor, this so-called anthropogenic forcing is trapping more outgoing longwave radiation, which further contributes to global warming.
The study - published on June 15 in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters - warned that, unless the rate of heat uptake subsides, humanity can expect more disastrous climate changes in the near future.
Commenting on his findings, lead author Norman Loeb, the principal investigator for CERES at NASA's Langley Research Center, stated: "The two very independent ways of looking at changes in Earth's energy imbalance are in really, really good agreement.
"They're both showing this very large trend, which gives us a lot of confidence that what we're seeing [are] a real phenomenon and not just an instrumental artifact."
He added: "It's likely a mix of anthropogenic forcing and internal variability, and over this period they're both causing warming, which leads to a fairly large change in Earth's energy imbalance. The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented."
Meanwhile, co-author Gregory Johnson, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, commented:
"The lengthening and highly complementary records from Argo and CERES have allowed us both to pin down Earth's energy imbalance with increasing accuracy, and to study its variations and trends with increasing insight, as time goes on.
"Observing the magnitude and variations of this energy imbalance are vital to understanding Earth’s changing climate."