Global Warming Is Accelerating

There are a flurry of articles coming out about the acceleration of global warming. This is because of the reports coming out of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Conference which is currently in session (2.16-2.20) in St. Louis, Missouri. Much of the reporting focuses on the dramatic increase in the melting of the southern Greenland glaciers (such as the Kangerdlussuaq Glacier). There is also the stunning report that greenhouse gases are accumulating 30 times faster than the last global warming 55 million years ago. The rate of heat increase may indicate that warming has entered a positive feedback loop.

The comments from the various scientists are ... picturesque, and I share them below.

"It will take tens of thousands of years before atmospheric carbon dioxide comes down to pre-industrial levels," the professor said. "Even after humans stop burning fossil fuels, the effects will be long-lasting." "James Zachos, professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup.

The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports." Independent, 2/17/05).

Jim Hansen of NASA writes: "How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

It's hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded."

Eric Rignot of JPL notes: ""We are concerned because we know that sea levels have been able to rise much faster in the past - 10 times faster. This is a big gorilla. If sea level rise is multiplied by 10 or more, I'm not sure we can deal with that ..."

From Glacier Melt Could Signal Faster Rise in Ocean Levels, we get the following two prospects:

In 1996, the amount of water produced by melting ice in Greenland was about 90 times the amount consumed by Los Angeles in a year. Last year, the melted ice amounted to 225 times the volume of water that city uses annually."

and later ...

"The implications are global," said Julian Dowdeswell, a glacier expert at the University of Cambridge in England who reviewed the new paper for Science. "We are not talking about walking along the sea front on a nice summer day, we are talking of the worst storm settings, the biggest storm surges . . . you are upping the probability major storms will take place."

Finally, from the AAAS News Archives Climate experts urge immediate action to offset impact of global warming, we get these tidbits:

"We are performing an experiment at a planetary scale that hasn't been done for millions of years," Schrag said. "This should not be a partisan issue," he added. "We cannot wait for a catastrophe to appear before we act because by then it would be too late. The next few decades will determine our path for the next century." ....

Many experts at the conference suggested that the onus is on the U.S.--and the American public--to makes changes that will reduce the nation's disproportionate impact on the world environment. "You hope that somehow people will understand that we have got to do something now," Joyce Penner, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan, told Reuters in an interview. "Some people get it -- some people are driving hybrids. But there is a problem with the American public."

And someone finally remembers the poor (from the AAS article):

Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy states: "It should go without saying that the vulnerability of the world's poor will be multiplied many-fold if global warming causes significant melting of one or both of the polar ice sheets," Kennedy said in an interview before the conference. "Yet exacerbation of poverty around the world--whether from flooding, reduced crop yields or increased prevalence of asthma, diarrhea, malaria or other illnesses--is part of the climate-change story that hasn't really been told. That is why it's important to make the science underlying climate change accessible to policymakers in parts of the world, like the United States, where much of the source of the problem lies."

Michael Oppenheimer states: "By mid-century, millions more poor children around the world are likely to face displacement, malnourishment, disease and even starvation unless all countries take action now to slow global warming," he said in an interview.

"Mansions along the Hamptons of Long Island, New York, can be rebuilt further inland when the beaches erode. But imagine the difficulties faced by families in Bangladesh. An area where about 8 million people now live would be underwater if global sea level were to rise half a meter. Where are they going to go?"

Posted by rowan at February 17, 2006 3:16 PM | [eMail this article!] |