NOAA Study Claims Climate Change Irreversible
US Scientists Say Effects Remain for at Least a Millenia or More
Jan 26, 2009
Climate change may be here to stay if this scientist is to be believed. According to the study headed by Solomon, changes in the Earth’s climate caused by humans would likely not be able to be naturally reversed for 1,000 years if not longer. Worse yet, this would even be true if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were stopped altogether.
There's no sugarcoating the diagnosis of the planet’s climate health: “Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” Solomon said in comments to NOAA's NOAANews service.
Study Advances Understanding of CO2’s Effect on Planet
Effects on climate such as temperature and rainfall would be all but permanent. More worrisome, especially for coastal cities, is that already rising sea levels would remain at or near their current levels for the same period of time.
Present day concentration of CO2 is around 385 parts per million. To study the effects of increased carbon dioxide, and whether or not a pause in emissions has any beneficial effect.
Oceans Keep CO2 Levels High
In all cases, it was shown that even after CO2 emissions are completely stopped, the effects linger due to the world’s oceans.
“In the long run, both carbon dioxide loss and heat transfer depend on the same physics of deep-ocean mixing,” Solomon explained. “The two work against each other to keep temperatures almost constant for more than a thousand years, and that makes carbon dioxide unique among the major climate gases.”
So essentially even as CO2 levels drop, the effects stay for long afterward.
A Look at The Effects at Different CO2 Levels
Solomon’s team found that at a peak level of 450-600 parts per million, widespread dry conditions similar to that of the Plains during the Dust Bowl years would occur almost continuously across southern Europe, much of non-Equatorial Africa, the Southwest in the United States, and across western Australia.
Increasing the level of CO2 past that exacerbates the problem, and especially when it comes to sea levels. By 3000 at 600 parts per million sea levels will have increased about 1-3 feet worldwide, and as much as 6 feet higher when levels increase to 1,000 parts per million.
These factors do not take into full account the effects of ice melt, the study says: thus rises could be significantly more than what is advertised here.
More Fodder for the Global Warming Debate
No doubt, both sides of the global warming debate will latch on to the NOAA study to argue their respective points. Those that support the idea of climate change being linked to carbon dioxide will point to the study as more reasons why the reduction of CO2 emissions must be taken seriously, while those against it will likely dismiss it entirely.
Most recently, Princeton Physics professor Dr. William Happer was one of those scientists who have dismissed the idea of CO2 as a climate change agent, and would most likely take issue with this study as well.
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult,” he told the Daily Princetonian in a story that appeared on January 12, 2009.
Source: Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein. "Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 6. Published February 10, 2009. Pgs. 1704-1709.
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