The amount of heat trapped by Earth’s land, ocean, and atmosphere doubled over the course of just 14 years, a new study shows…

“The two very independent ways of looking at changes in Earth’s energy imbalance are in really, really good agreement, and they’re both showing this very large trend, which gives us a lot of confidence that what we’re seeing is a real phenomenon and not just an instrumental artifact,” said Norman Loeb, a NASA researcher and the lead author for the study in a press release. “The trends we found were quite alarming in a sense.”…

Fourteen years isn’t a long time compared to Earth’s long climate history — researchers will have to keep gathering data to get more information about how this fits into the complete picture of the planet’s energy imbalance.

Of course, if this incomplete science proves inadequate, incorrect…we’re screwed!