Rising
greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere means rising average temperatures for the planet, causing climate change.
The actual increase might be greater in the long run
because greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere could more than double without strong policies to control emissions.
The last
time greenhouse gas levels changed as much as they are changing now was when the earth emerged from the most recent ice - age.
The absence of warming over the past 15 to 20 years amidst rapidly rising
greenhouse gas levels poses a fundamental challenge to mainstream climate modeling.
Models used by the IPCC estimate global temperature and precipitation patterns will change throughout the 21st century given current
rising greenhouse gas levels.
By the way, in my opinion, the
elevated greenhouse gas levels already in the air, combined with the future emissions from machines already built, plus increased natural emissions from carbon sinks becoming carbon emitters (i.e. permafrost melting) will cause the rate of warming to top 0.4 C / decade by mid-century.
Earth is now absorbing nearly 1 W / m2 more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space, portending further warming even
if greenhouse gas levels were immediately stabilized.
Researchers accounted for human influence on climate by estimating the present - day chances of Harvey's rainfall totals and then comparing them with
1950s greenhouse gas levels.
Jane Lubchenco, one of the lead scientists on the study, predicts that these incidents are only likely to become more frequent as
greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, acidifying the oceans and heating up the land.
The ice cores reveal an incredibly tight connection between temperature and
greenhouse gas levels through the ice age cycles, thus proving the concepts put forward by Arrhenius more than a century ago.
To take one example, ice cores drilled from the Antarctic ice - sheet show a surprisingly close correlation
between greenhouse gas levels and temperature over the past 800,000 years.
With
current greenhouse gas levels now in the range of 400 - 405 parts per million coinciding with substantial jumps in glacial melt and sea level rise, it may be worth taking a look back at times in the geological past when atmospheric heating conditions were similar to those seen today.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggested in 2007 that the world should aim to
stabilise greenhouse gas levels at 450 ppm CO2 equivalent in order to avert dangerous climate change.
On Earth, though, there is probably little scope for reducing
greenhouse gas levels much below preindustrial levels, because plants need CO2.
Even though the rate of emissions of greenhouse gasses slowed down temporarily for some regions of the world, those gasses stay in the air after they are released, so this year
greenhouse gas levels reached new record high levels
The impact of increasing
greenhouse gas levels on the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) depends on many complex and interacting factors.
The 2014 and 2016 climate action reports detailed how the government was working to
cut greenhouse gas levels in the US to hit its emissions reduction targets.
Then they ran a series of simulations with
lower greenhouse gas levels corresponding to the pre-industrial era, and teased out the impacts.
New research suggests oceans play a critical role in climate by regulating greenhouse gas levels
Nonetheless, this current, countercyclical warming trend will likely continue — potentially exceeding that earlier warming —
unless greenhouse gas levels begin to come back down.
That translates to stabilizing
greenhouse gas levels at roughly 450 parts per million (ppm), according to Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Meanwhile, researchers continued to tally the environmental fallout of rising
greenhouse gas levels while searching for signs of missing heat from Earth's surface.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to rise thanks to dirtier economies and a weakening in natural systems» ability to remove the greenhouse gas
But in a second run, in
which greenhouse gas levels stopped rising after 2020, the sea ice shrank until 2020 then recovered, suggesting no tipping point had been passed.
Meanwhile, atmospheric
greenhouse gas levels grow, ice sheets melt, hurricanes become more ferocious, and the day of reckoning for the Earth looms closer.
But in the world of marine microbial ecology, there are very few model systems and associated tools that enable scientists to deeply explore the physiology, biochemistry, and ecology of marine microbes, which drive the ocean's elemental cycles,
influence greenhouse gas levels, and support marine food webs.
There is evidence that
greenhouse gas levels fell at the start of ice ages and rose during the retreat of the ice sheets, but it is difficult to establish cause and effect (see the notes above on the role of weathering).
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase,
letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket.
Records studied by paleoclimatologists reveal that the more extreme possibilities for this century and beyond — temperatures soaring, ice sheets vanishing, fertile lands withering into deserts — were realized previously on Earth when atmospheric
greenhouse gas levels surged.
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