Research suggests climate change target ‘not safe’
From the University of Exeter via Eurekalert
An analysis of geological records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming has revealed ‘startling’ results which suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe.
The study by climate change experts at the University of Exeter has important implications for international negotiators aiming to agree binding targets for future greenhouse gas emission targets.
Professor Chris Turney and Dr Richard Jones, both from the University’s Department of Geography, have reported a comprehensive study of the Last Interglacial, a period of warming some 125,000 years ago, in the latest issue of the Journal of Quaternary Science.
Caption: This is Professor Chris Turney in the field in Svalbard. Credit: University of Exeter
The results reveal the European Union target of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels shouldn’t be considered ‘safe’.
From their analysis, the scientists found 263 estimates of the conditions when sediments and ice were laid down during the Last Interglacial, allowing them to reconstruct past temperatures around the globe. To compare the reconstructed estimates with today, they took the Last Interglacial values away from modern temperatures averaged over the period 1961 to 1990.
The results show temperatures appear to have been more than 5˚C warmer in polar regions while the tropics only warmed marginally; strikingly similar to recent trends. Not only this, but taken together, the world appears to have been some 1.9˚C warmer when compared to preindustrial temperatures. Critically, the warmer temperatures appear to have resulted in global sea levels some 6.6 to 9.4 metres higher than today, with a rate of rise of between 60 to 90 centimetres per decade — more than double that recently observed.
The higher temperatures seen during the Last Interglacial are comparable to projections for the end of this century under the low emission scenarios contained within the recent Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Turney said: “The results here are quite startling and, importantly, they suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target as envisaged by the European Union and others. The inevitable conclusion is emission targets will have to be lowered further still.”
The full paper, Does the Agulhas Current amplify global temperatures during super-interglacials?, appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Quarternary Science. It can be viewed here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.1423/abstract
Notes for editors:
A blog by Professor Chris Turney on this subject, called A Lesson from Past Global Warming, can be viewed on his website at www.christurney.com
I just moved to the Blue Ridge foothills. These researchers have confirmed that 800 feet above current sea level should keep me safe during my lifetime (I’m 70 years young).
Those poor folks on the Outer Banks and Carolina lowlands!!! 🙂
Are we to believe that the Journal of Quarternary Science is peer reviewed!?!
I bet at least half the WUWT readers picked up on that gaff at once.
Mr. Brego, you missed the point of this article and of the Greenie movement! They don’t want less winter, they want more! Why on earth do you presume different? All they ever talk about is “lowering temperatures to pre-industrial levels” and sillyness like that. They want ice-ages and glaciers and man-eating polar bears! And so, I guess if we are to let the Greenies have their way, we should modify the azola plant to grow everywhere, eat up the freggin carbon, and drive us into an even greater iceage! But no, they’d rather just tax us to death and ensure their jobs into the next milleneum. Nothing so simple as using an existing plant… ho-hum.
One of the key concepts used in present day efforts to quantify MSL via satellite altimetry, is that of the geoid. In simplified terms it is an artificial construct which attempts to portray what the oceans’ surface would be if all the planet’s land masses were totally pervious to the water in the oceans, with the variations in surface height due to the small variability in the planet’s gravitational strength. Most representations of the geoid give the range of gravitational strength as +/- 50-60 milliGals. When plotted in terms of absolute surface height that results in a range of 250 to over 300 METERS. In other words every milliGal variation in gravity strength corresponds to a change of surface height of 2-3 meters. Efforts have been made for decades to create models of the geoid. Many have been produced, each different in not insignificant ways from the others. The GRACE satellite and the similarly tasked European sat, whose name I’m blanking on at the moment, have revealed over their short lives that the Earth’s gravity is not constant over even a minutely brief period in geologic time.
The point of all this in the present context is that, even if we stipulate to the thoroughly dubious notion that these folks’ paleoreconstruction of Ancient sea levels is as accurate as they claim, without a similar reconstruction of the Earth’s gravitational properties for the same time period, which is at least a match for present observational data, no conclusions about what created those sea levels are justified.
A rather strange paper really. The Last Interglacial temperature data base is weird. I wondered how they managed to find so many low tropical temperatures, but apparently the tropical SST’s are almost exclusively 30 year old CLIMAP data and ignores more recent studies which generally show tropical SST’s to have been 1-2 degrees warmer than at present.
The sea level estimate is even more suspect. It is completely dependent on Kopp et al. (2009) which was in turn to a large extent based on pure junk data from ex-glaciated areas where the last interglacial seal level is quite impossible to determine on account of isostasy.
As a matter of fact the last interglacial sea level is very uncertain. The frequently quoted 6 meters higher than at present seems to be a factoid, at least I have never been able to find any serious study that it could be based on. Measurements on the tectonically very stable Gawler craton in Australia suggests that 2 meters is a more likely figure.
stephen richards says:
October 1, 2010 at 1:55 pm
“Exeter is a nothing uni in the SW of england and this rubbish confirms that assessment. My god these people are arrogant and thick as two short planks.”
Exeter is a well respected uni but with a jumped up climate dept funded by their friends 2 miles away at the Met office.
tonyb
“Allowed” to warm? What happens if the planet doesn’t cooperate? Have they got a red button to press for that as well?
People, please welcome homo superbus (arrogant man) the species that can control the temperature of our world.
They walk amongst you!
But rest easy the UN is appointing an ambassador to facilitate their integration and I am doing the only sensible thing possible and opening another bottle! Today has been amazing, this and 10:10. Whoever is writing this script needs to change whatever it is that they are on.
Exeter… says it all.
That’s where the meeting that specifically excluded people such as Pielke Sr. took place… Says it all.
A drastic reduction in breathing organisms is next…
I think they used this proforma
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1
more than double that recently observed.
recently observed sea level rise is betweeen 2.8-3.2mm year which is 2.8-3.2 cm per decade, which is 20-30x less than the 60-90 cm/decade trotted out in the article.
Has anyone checked the models to see whether the climate we CURRENTLY live in is ‘safe’?
Sea level rise is a big red (scary, to some) herring.
Since the last ice age some 21000 years ago sea levels have increased by 120m. The rise in sea levels was faster at first, slowing and eventually stabilizing 3-4 thousand years ago. It has remained around 10 – 15 cm the last few centuries, with no measurable increase the past century. How can this be? Homeostasis is one way to describe it. With climate, when one thing happens (warming, for instance), other things happen as well. Some are positive feedbacks (melting glaciers), while others are negative (increased humidity = increased snowfall, and ice build up at the poles). Warmists love to ignore the negative feedbacks. It is their stock in trade.
Methinks someone misplaced a decimal point. A know of no time when sea levels were rising at 3 cm a year (30 cm per decade). It may (if we can measure accurately enough) have risen as much as 3 mm a year, or 3 cm a decade, but even that is slowing (if we can measure accurately enough) .
We’re back to controlling the climate, again? Well, at least from this is something most people can get a laugh. While they’re at it, can they send some rain this way? We’ve been a bit dry for a week or so and the dust on the roads are getting a bit much. Ego-maniacs and lunatics.
Well:
I guess …..
this is the map in the study ….
“””””””There are many difficulties in the map of South America, including duplication of rivers. Close examination of the coastline supports the alternative theory that the “extra” landmass is simply the South American coast, probably explored in secret by Portuguese navigators,…”””””
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Piri_Reis_map_interpretation.jpg/220px-Piri_Reis_map_interpretation.jpg
It is now beyond ridiculous for these smiling fools to release their “findings”, and proceed to simply lie about such simple facts as the rate of current Sea Level Rise.
And never a correction.
It’s just a lie and they do it with a smile.
No more snake oil.
Facts. Simple facts. darn it.
“”” Lady Life Grows says:
October 1, 2010 at 1:50 pm
The planet was 10 degrees C warmer than today for 300 million years since the Cambrian. That is, 22 degC, exactly room temperature. That is probably optimum. It is also a maximum as feedback mechanisms prevent it from rising any higher than that. “””
Well by all accounts the present Temperature is close to 288 K or +15 deg C so +22 is only seven degrees C higher than today.
I live 50 meters from the beach and about 2 meters above the high water mark.
Should I sell up now ????
” “The results here are quite startling and, importantly, they suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target as envisaged by the European Union and others. The inevitable conclusion is emission targets will have to be lowered further still.””
It is just amazing the range of authority attained by a Geographer .
Shouldn’t he be out measuring a mountain somewhere to see of it conforms to the terrain map ?
And then cutting or adding some dirt to match it?
Instead he is pronouncing himself judge, jury, climatologist, and UN General Secretary, dictating the allowable rise in sea level ( over which we have no control) to the governments of the world.
It is offensive already. I would not trust this liar with directions to the airport.
The humble Geographer.
Professor Chris Turney:
“I’m a Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Exeter where I’m focussing my efforts on … To do something positive about climate change, I’m a Director of a small company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.”
Um, Professor: Bi-products???? What?!?! Surely you mean “by-products”? Somebody needs to stop relying on spell-checking, and start spending some grant money on real people who can read…
By the way, as others have already noted, I detect the pungent and fruity aroma of a conflict of interests here.
Just saying.
This doesn’t even come up to the standards of “third rate”.
It is so annoying that these people get public funding. Can’t they do something useful for society that is more suited to their talents like picking up rubbish at roadsides?
Report from Chicago:
Presently above sea level, about 660 feet.
I guess that is going to change.
=========================
Professor Turney said: “The results here are quite startling and, importantly, they suggest sea levels will rise significantly higher than anticipated and that stabilizing global average temperatures at 2˚C above pre-industrial levels may not be considered a ‘safe’ target as envisaged by the European Union and others. The inevitable conclusion is emission targets will have to be lowered further still.”
============
The term “safe”, is a misnomer.
The world is not “safe”, ask anybody.
help,
it was 47f this morning and 94 at the present – how will I ever survive?