From NOAA News, Susan Solomon predicts the future with certainty. In other news, on the same day Caterpillar, Sprint, Texas Instruments, and Home Depot announce massive layoff plans to the tune of 50,000 people, unemployed climate modelers get a government bailout today courtesy of our new president to the tune of 140 million dollars. That should be just enough to pay the electric power bill for the new supercomputer I’m sure NOAA will just “have to have” now to keep up with the new toy for the Brits at Hadley. (h/t to Ed Scott for the NOAA pr)
New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible
January 26, 2009
A new scientific study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reaches a powerful conclusion about the climate change caused by future increases of carbon dioxide: to a large extent, there’s no going back.
The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped. The findings appear during the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Solomon, who is based at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
“It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years,” Solomon said. “But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”
The study examines the consequences of allowing CO2 to build up to several different peak levels beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million and then completely halting the emissions after the peak. The authors found that the scientific evidence is strong enough to quantify some irreversible climate impacts, including rainfall changes in certain key regions, and global sea level rise.
If CO2 is allowed to peak at 450-600 parts per million, the results would include persistent decreases in dry-season rainfall that are comparable to the 1930s North American Dust Bowl in zones including southern Europe, northern Africa, southwestern North America, southern Africa and western Australia.
The study notes that decreases in rainfall that last not just for a few decades but over centuries are expected to have a range of impacts that differ by region. Such regional impacts include decreasing human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts. Dry-season wheat and maize agriculture in regions of rain-fed farming, such as Africa, would also be affected.
Climate impacts were less severe at lower peak levels. But at all levels added carbon dioxide and its climate effects linger because of the ocean.
“In the long run, both carbon dioxide loss and heat transfer depend on the same physics of deep-ocean mixing. 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,” said Solomon.
The scientists emphasize that increases in CO2 that occur in this century “lock in” sea level rise that would slowly follow in the next 1,000 years. Considering just the expansion of warming ocean waters—without melting glaciers and polar ice sheets—the authors find that the irreversible global average sea level rise by the year 3000 would be at least 1.3–3.2 feet (0.4–1.0 meter) if CO2 peaks at 600 parts per million, and double that amount if CO2 peaks at 1,000 parts per million.
“Additional contributions to sea level rise from the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets are too uncertain to quantify in the same way,” said Solomon. “They could be even larger but we just don’t have the same level of knowledge about those terms. We presented the minimum sea level rise that we can expect from well-understood physics, and we were surprised that it was so large.”
Rising sea levels would cause “…irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged,” the authors write.
Geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. “Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,” said Solomon.
The authors relied on measurements as well as many different models to support the understanding of their results. They focused on drying of particular regions and on thermal expansion of the ocean because observations suggest that humans are contributing to changes that have already been measured.
Besides Solomon, the study’s authors are Gian-Kasper Plattner and Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Pierre Friedlingstein of Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
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Steve Berry,
What’s wrong with you?
Of course it’s true!
The BBC says so, damn it!
You ought to know better than to question them. Really!
Of course “some” carbon dioxide emitted by humans remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years. That is just basic physical chemistry gas state theory. As a piece of science though, nobody should be allowed to get away with “some”. Examiner’s comment – be precise, state percentage.
This off topic, but here is more serious damage being caused by the rush to biofuel.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24967830-11949,00.html
Seve Berry:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Looks pretty darn normal to me.
The BBC’s report is based on stupid computer models that say that Antarctic is going to cool, but yet get warm. It’s saying the penguins are gonna die if the ice melts.
And if it doesn’t rain for the entire summer, crops will die too. Aint that something!
Rhys Jaggar, good comment.
Despite JP’s “no peer-review” nonsense, Prof Segalstad has done some ****** good work on CO2 lifetime, and on the ***** IPCC line on this. He quotes 35 studies and says Judged from the data of Table 2 there is apparently very little disagreement from early works to later works regardless of measurement method, that the atmospheric CO2 lifetime is quite short, near 5 years. This fact was also acknowledged early by IPCC’s chairman Bolin (Bolin & Eriksson, 1959).
Engelbeen thinks the CO2 rise IS due to our output but has no warming effect; OTOH many here think the CO2 rise is, say, the oceans still warming and outgassing as Akasofu suggests and Segalstad’s studies imply. People behind desks seldom stop to consider the AWESOME power of the oceans to store heat and moderate it and circulate CO2. Read my primer (refs to Segalstad there) and page on CO2.
Another plug for a skeptics’ wiki – it would be so nice to have a place where Segalstad and Engelbeen are explained, with pics, so we have a skeptics’ gold standard with which to counter the repetitive challenges that refer back to their leaden info standards, RealClimate, Gristmill, New Scientist, etc, as if they are valid. I’d start it but don’t have the time right now. But I’m sure THAT would be a real gift to the future.
For Gore’s end of world sermon tomorrow, freezing rain and sleet are in the forecast for DC, with winter storm warnings over much of the upper midwest and northeast.
It seems clear now that the climate modellers have gone back to their old position, that the deep oceans will absorb some of the global warming (half or so) and it will stay in the deep oceans for more than a thousand years (perhaps Susan Solomon is talking about the impact of CO2 rather than CO2 itself).
That means we do not reach +3.0C by 2100, we only reach +1.8C or so and it takes another 1,000 years before we get to the +3.0C. That is more-or-less what Hansen’s newest presentation says as well.
I don’t agree with this, it seems CO2 needs to warm both the atmosphere and the deep oceans so we don’t ever get +3.0C, we only get to +1.8C at which point both the deep ocean and the atmosphere reach equilibrium.
The climate modellers were more-or-less assuming lately, the deep oceans were isolated from the surface and all the global warming would go into the atmosphere and the surface layers of the ocean.
The temperature rise to date is forcing them back to the earlier theory, that the deep ocean requires more than 1 thousand years to warm up ( just 1C or so) equivalent to the surface rise. The deep ocean absorption just means there will be less warming at the surface.
And it is illogical for global warming to dry out the planet and cause all these droughts. Relative Humidity has to stay broadly constant for the warming numbers to get to +3.0C and if relative humidity stays broadly constant, then so will rainfall.
If there are more droughts, then there will not be as much global warming. the warmings seem to just ignore the basic logic required for their theories to work. There is nothing but inconsistencies in all these propositions.
Plants and oceans are absorbing more than half of our CO2 emissions currently (2 ppm (4 GTs) of our 4 ppm emissions(8.0 GTS). If CO2 emissions stopped and plants and oceans continued absorbing at these rates, it will just take 70 years to return CO2 to its pre-industrial level.
The proposal, that CO2 remains for 1,000 years should be evident in the
underlying data and graph of CO2. The graph seems linear, and not a function of compounded accumulation.
Thank you ALL !
having spent $1,400,000 of my families money with a psychiatrist these last 20 years trying to solve my problem of impersonating Plato, I now know it is the Co2 that he exhaled that is in my system.
Anybody reading this want to swap Plato Co2 for some of Jules Vern’s ? That’s what Susan Solomon’s got and I want some!
(those that are to smart to go into politics are ruled by idiots) (Plato 426 BC )
“Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,” said Solomon.
In other words, my pronouncements of what will happen over a 1000 years is science and not speculation, but your pronouncements about how the consequences of my science can be alleviated are speculations. Hubris anyone?
Never mind CO2 sequestration, does anyone really think that we could not “engineeer” as much desalinated water as we need over the next 1000 years and pump it into existing acquifers?
Questions: Are CO2 molecules that are originally emitted by human activity and then absorbed into the oceans only to reemerge back into the atmosphere later (perhaps many times over) being counted as the same molecule and part of this 1000 year life cycle? Or are they referring to a molecule that actually floats around in the atmosphere that long?
“For an additional amount for ‘‘Science’’, $400,000,000, of which not less than $250,000,000 shall be solely for accelerating the development of the tier 1 set of Earth science climate research missions recommended by the National Academies Decadal Survey. ”
Never thought it would be appropriate here, but I’ve gotta say…That takes a lotta NADS 8)
JimB
This makes me sick. Is there anything we can do to stop this farce from going any farther? Or all we all doomed to suffer through bad science that they figure out ways to skirt the system. By putting a thousand years in this report it takes them off the hook to having to prove what they are saying is correct.
Will the cooling trend we all now is happening help stop this lunacy?
Demesure:
Contrary to your claims, there has been no “analytical approach”, no experimental data to give the “CO2 lifetime” in the links above.
Only calculations from model. And handwaving.
As I said the idea of a ‘CO2 lifetime’ is ill-defined and largely irrelevant to the problem. There is in fact a wealth of experimental data to support the models used. For example, the first paper’s projection is based on an analytical approach using the the carbon cycle model presented by Joos et al in this paper.
An efficient and accurate representation of complex oceanic and biospheric models of anthropogenic carbon uptake
And the models concerned have been extensively backtested against 150 years of CO2 concentration observations, to name just one output.
See http://www.bgc.mpg.de/~martin.heimann/projects/CCMLP/CCMLP_GAIM_2000.pdf
and references contained therein.
Of course any projection a millenium into the future must be model based, in this case the models used have been validated against experimental data, contrary to your assertion. Unless, of course, you question the validity of the Bern carbon cycle itself, which would put you in a distinct minority; this is pretty uncontroversial stuff.
cheers,
JP
Re comments above on CO2:
See this beautiful animation of atmospheric CO2 seasonal increase and decrease at
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
It is difficult to see the impact of humanity in this impressive display of nature’s power.
Regards, Allan
Actually, what this study shows very clearly is that once on the path of government-funded pseudo-science there is no turning back. The garbage these so-called “scientists” turn out reeks to high heaven, and yet the politicians and the MSM will gobble it with gusto, as if it were the finest French cuisine. The damage they do to science, and ultimately to humanity will be severe, and largely irreversible.
If climate change is irreversible, doesn’t that mean we would better spend our money on sensible adaptations rather than economic poison pills intended to reduce carbon output?
Katherine (04:29:44) :
“So…? You still haven’t established why it would be desirable to stop CO2 emissions. Higher CO2 levels haven’t been proven to cause higher temperatures; however, they have been shown to improve crop production at levels of up to 1000ppm.”
I agree totally with you, Katherine. If you read Engelbeen you will appreciate my point, since he also sees no obvious or alarming relationship between CO2 increase and global warming. I just posted this to show that the 1000 year influence is an exaggeration.
Extra computing power may, perhaps, make it harder to produce consistent model results.
Rhys:
“There was less detail about carbon dioxide.
Overall, as a citizen of the world, I’d say he’s on the right track and hence it may be that he’s palming off the climate modellers for a while whilst he gets his Presidential ducks in a row. ”
I think that supposition is based on you not getting the level of details that we get here.
He just signed legislation that gives each individual state the power to regulate vehicle emissions due to C02 being a pollutant.
We’ve been through a small part of this before, when you couldn’t buy the same car in California that you could buy in Arizona or Massachusetts. Manufacturers were forced into making separate models just for california.
Now, at the extreme, we could have 50 different model requirements.
As a citizen in the U.S. who reads news items constantly, I see no let up in the pounding of the C02 drum at all, in fact, I believe it’s intensifying.
JimB
Am I missing something? What has happened to the data from the ARGOS buoys? I haven’t seen anything since last March. Is the government holding back data until they get it adjusted to show warming?
This is last report I have seen:
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=291423153272209
I wonder if every carbon atom on the planet has been in the atmosphere at some point ?? Half-life of 4 Billion years and still counting, eh ?? Do I win a prize ??
For the purportedly relevant stuff, i.e. that which is in the atmosphere now, it looks to me, by eyeballing the downslopes on the seasonal Mauna Loa curves on Wikipedia, that the sub-10 year half-life estimates would be the most appropriate in the actual real world. Is the real world relevant ??
ATTN: cohenite
The link is http://www.uigi.com/air.html
Didn’t you notice that there was only 2 w’s?
Trevor:
Interesting find. Reminds me a little of “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki (which everyone should read). The collective power of a group of non-experts far outways the skill of any “expert”.
I’d also suggest every “expert” should read the following before forcing more AGW fiction down our throats
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html