Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

Earth gets over 170,000 terawatts of solar energy every day—10,000 times more than humanity uses. Losing just a fraction of our cloud cover means a massive, invisible throttle is coming off the climate system. If this trend holds, we’re not just warming—we’re stepping on the gas.

terawatt is not an energy unit.

R̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶t̶e̶x̶t̶…̶

- A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶e̶f̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶

̶ A̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶1̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶s̶ ̶1̶ ̶j̶o̶u̶l̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶

- A̶ ̶T̶e̶r̶a̶w̶a̶t̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶n̶e̶r̶g̶y̶.̶

[edit: The earth receives 14.9 ZettaWatts of solar power per day, and 173 Petawatts per second, I was reading it as 173 PW over a day, in which case the above works fine. Mea culpa]

See: https://gosolarquotes.com.au/amount-of-solar-energy-hitting-...

Yeah the units cancel, that's the issue. The phrasing implies that after half a day it's received 85k terawatts which doesn't make any sense.

Power (kg m^2 / s^3) * Time (s) = Energy (kg m^2 / s^2)

Now from context it's obvious that what was meant is that Earth continually receives 170 terawatts from the sun. The phrasing is technically inaccurate, but it's a turn of phrase that works fine.