15 June 2015, Climate News Network, Long-lived CO2 warms world for many millennia. The heat given off by burning fossil fuels warms the Earth far less than the carbon dioxide emitted, which research shows traps the heat in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Gun the engine, and the ignition of fossil fuel produces not just working energy but heat that dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. But it also produces carbon dioxide that dissipates into the atmosphere. And in less than two months, according to new research, that pulse of carbon dioxide will have engendered more heat for the planet than the original touch of the accelerator. Xiaochun Zhang and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, California, in the United States report in Geophysical Research Letters that the carbon dioxide warming exceeds the heat released by a single act of oil combustion in just 45 days. Light the gas in the cooking stove and the heating cost to the planet is exceeded in 59 days. Burn a lump of coal, and the atmosphere feels the greater heat in just 34 days. And in all three cases, the pulses of carbon dioxide will go on heating the planet – and on, and on. “Ultimately, the warming induced by carbon dioxide over the many thousands of years it remains in the atmosphere would exceed warming from combustion by a factor of 100,000 or more,” said Professor Caldeira. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
4 June 2015, The Conversation, Climate meme debunked as the ‘tropospheric hot spot’ is found: Before climate sceptics got excited about the “hiatus” or slowdown in global surface warming during the past 15 years or so, they were fond of discussing the “missing tropospheric hotspot” – the alleged lack of anticipated temperature increase in the tropical upper troposphere (roughly 5-15 km altitude). Both the “hiatus” and the “missing hot spot” have been interesting research problems, because models seemed like they might be missing something important. There have been significant advances on both problems in the past year. And the new results do not offer much hope that scientists are fundamentally mistaken about global warming. Read More here
2 June 2015, Climate News Network, Glacier loss raises high concern over water supplies: The glaciers of the Everest region of the Himalayan massif—home to the highest peak of all—could lose between 70% and 99% of their volume as a result of global warming. Asia’s mountain ranges contain the greatest thickness of ice beyond the polar regions. But new research predicts that, by 2100, the world’s highest waters—on which billions of people depend for their water supply—could be at their lowest ebb because of the ice loss. Many of the continent’s great rivers begin up in the snows, fed by melting ice in high-peak regions such as the Hindu Kush, the Pamir and the Himalayas. Joseph Shea, a glacial hydrologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal, and French and Dutch colleagues report in The Cryosphere journal that they used more than 50 years of climate data and sophisticated computer models of predicted climate change to study the pattern of snowpack and seasonal melt in the Everest region. Read More here
1 June 2015, Climate News Network, Overheating Earth staggers into Last Chance Saloon: Hard bargaining in Bonn this week will probably decide whether the crucial climate talks in Paris in December can save human civilisation from ultimate collapse. The text of the agreement on how the world will tackle climate change and set targets that will keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels is being negotiated in Bonn this week. The 2°C limit has been set by politicians to prevent the planet overheating dangerously − but the cuts in carbon emissions required to achieve it have so far not been agreed.
It is this gap between the policy goals agreed by world leaders and their lack of action to achieve them that the Bonn conference seeks to address. The meeting, which opened today, will last for 10 days as working groups grapple with action to reduce carbon emissions, how to finance technology transfer, and how to adapt to sea level rise and other unavoidable consequences of present warming − such as the current heatwave affecting India, where temperatures in some southern states have topped 47°C. Read More here