Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios
New paper in Nature Geoscience examines inertia of carbon dioxide emissions
New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.
The study, to be published in the Jan. 9 Advanced Online Publication of the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first full climate model simulation to make predictions out to 1000 years from now. It is based on best-case, ‘zero-emissions’ scenarios constructed by a team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (an Environment Canada research lab at the University of Victoria) and the University of Calgary.
“We created ‘what if’ scenarios,” says Dr. Shawn Marshall, Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and University of Calgary geography professor. “What if we completely stopped using fossil fuels and put no more CO2 in the atmosphere? How long would it then take to reverse current climate change trends and will things first become worse?” The research team explored zero-emissions scenarios beginning in 2010 and in 2100.
The Northern Hemisphere fares better than the south in the computer simulations, with patterns of climate change reversing within the 1000-year timeframe in places like Canada. At the same time parts of North Africa experience desertification as land dries out by up to 30 percent, and ocean warming of up to 5°C off of Antarctica is likely to trigger widespread collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, a region the size of the Canadian prairies.
Researchers hypothesize that one reason for the variability between the North and South is the slow movement of ocean water from the North Atlantic into the South Atlantic. “The global ocean and parts of the Southern Hemisphere have much more inertia, such that change occurs more slowly,” says Marshall. “The inertia in intermediate and deep ocean currents driving into the Southern Atlantic means those oceans are only now beginning to warm as a result of CO2 emissions from the last century. The simulation showed that warming will continue rather than stop or reverse on the 1000-year time scale.”
Wind currents in the Southern Hemisphere may also have an impact. Marshall says that winds in the global south tend to strengthen and stay strong without reversing. “This increases the mixing in the ocean, bringing more heat from the atmosphere down and warming the ocean.”
Researchers will next begin to investigate more deeply the impact of atmosphere temperature on ocean temperature to help determine the rate at which West Antarctica could destabilize and how long it may take to fully collapse into the water.
The paper “Ongoing climate change following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions” by Nathan P. Gillett, Vivek K. Arora, Kirsten Zickfeld, Shawn J. Marshall and William J. Merryfield will be available online at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/index.html
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I really had to laugh at the headline provided with the press release:
Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios
Let’s see, did the climate change at all during the last 1000 years?
It depends on who you ask.
The Hockey Team says no:
Others who are not members of the Hockey Teamsters Union of Concerned Scientists say yes:
History tells us the second graph is the more likely truth.
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It is staggering that scientists, universities and journals should put their names to such rediculous and obvious garbage. Do these people not have any sense of shame or embarrassment?
Almost every aspect of so-called climate science is in genuine dispute and modelling based on biased assumptions and very few facts has lost all credibility.
Kinda reminds me of the guy who jumped off the cliff–nothing to do but wait for the splat at the bottom!
Oh wait… The guy was just dreaming! The only splat was his wife dumping a vase of cold water on his face for coming in so late the night before (and it doesn’t take 1,000 years for this to happen).
This is an urgent matter?
Investment in science must be increased? Funding for all aspects of climate research, monitoring and all associated fields should have a top priority?
Our very survival depends upon the consensus making Team?
On another note:
What is the theory behind the near vertical warming of 1700-1750?
And why doesn’t the hockey stick show it?
No sane person would ever attempt to predict anything that far ahead save that all those on the planet today and in the next 850 years will be dead by then. It sounds very like a desperate attempt to keep the fires stoked so that extra government funds can pour into the coffers of the AGW fanatics. As my Latin master at school said. “You must realise that less than 1% of the population are intelligent and less than 1% of those use their intelligence.”
“Then History came to prove them right, because this is in the very nature of History: to give right to those who do not.” B.P.Galdós
I would have been greatly impressed had the Canadians ran the simulations backwards and successfully reproduced the last 1000 to 3000 years of climate. When do we get to hear about validation runs?? When is the climate research community going to get serious about the science??? GK
“Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and University of Calgary geography professor.”
geography professor . . . what a bad joke. A high school physics teacher with knowledge of chemistry would be a far better choice.
Richard Day says:
January 10, 2011 at 9:04 am
This is the state of higher education in my home country.
So it is true that: “Being trained it is absolutely different than Being”
All breakthroughs in science and everything else have been done by Beings. A perfectly trained thing it is a perfectly working and repetitive machine.
“The top 20 influence-peddlers are listed in the Guardian as:
1) Al Gore
2) Bill Gates
3) Arnold Schwarzenegger
4) Boris Johnson
5) David Beckham
6) Ken Livingstone
7) Chris Martin
8) Cheryl Cole
9) Gwyneth Paltrow
10) Duncan Bannatyne
11) Phil Schofield
12) Robbie Williams
13) Fearne Cotton
14) Leonardo DiCaprio
15) Holly Willoughby
16) Colin Firth
17) Graham Norton
18) Sienna Miller
19) Paloma Faith
20) Gary Neville”
I am pretty sure that is the same list of who not to buy a used Jaguar from.
Does ”we” know why there have been 4 major geological times of glaciations of different lengths the last billion years? And 60% of the time there was no glaciations. Where there no Milankovitch cycles during this time? Is it even possible to predict how long the present one will last?
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/451/fourglaciations.gif
image: http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html
Can it be that we are very lucky and this one will be an exceptional short one? How could we know?
Ice ages don’t look like fun times:
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8166/lastglamod.gif
I guessed we would be better of handling the problem of warmer and rising sea than an ice age. But that was before I learned that politicians in cooperation with climate scientists could fine tune the average global temperature down to a precission of tenths of a degree by controlling CO2 emissions with taxes.
Computers crunch numbers based on the specific instructions of the software. Computers don’t ‘know’ more than the people who write the software. If the software writers assume the Earth’s atmosphere is filled with positive feedbacks and tipping points, the computers will dutifully crunch those equations and spit out 1,000 years of warming! The general answer is predetermined by the assumptions in the software!
Thus, expensive models are akin to the elaborate hand waving of magicians! They are diversions, designed to distract people from the truth.
(Of course, if the initial assumptions were correct, the Earth would have fried a long time ago!)
Like the tropical mid-tropespheric hotspot, Alarmists will spend years (and plenty of public dollars) in search of the missing deep ocean heat. In the meantime, they will churn out copious studies which make the assumption that such large amounts of heat energy exist deep below the ocean surfaces (ie what if there was 5 x 10^95 Joules of heat stored in our oceans?)
Forget their sci-fi projections about “climate”, the Horror Show quality Reality manifested by these “peer reviewed” Climate Scientists amongst us is already about as bad as it can get…..I hope.
Did anyone notice the line where constant strong winds in the southern Atlantic ocean will warm the water by transporting from up in the atmosphere down to the water? All this time I thought wind was the key driver to evaporation which has to cool the body of liquid that is being affected. Now I know better because this is Peer reviewed? Wonder how far up the heat comes from?
Cheers,
Barry Strayer
Worth bookmarking as prime example of the worth of Phds and scientific studies sans any actual science.
Oops, Forgot to put the word “heat” after transporting above.
Sorry,
Barry Strayer
Of course the CBC loudly repeated this baseless speculation passing it off as news or worse, as research. Defending the theft of my taxes seems to be part of the CBC mandate.
What do you do when you’ve had enough?!
In 1956, Issac Asimov addressed the vexatious issue of computer modelling.
“Multivac fell dead and silent. The slow flashing of lights ceased, the distant sounds of clicking relays ended.
Then, just as the frightened technicians felt they could hold their breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the teletype attached to that portion of Multivac. Five words were printed: INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
“No bet,” whispered Lupov. They left hurriedly.
Read the whole story in just a few very rewarding minutes. There’s nowt new under the sun.
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
I like this 1000 year study, we could finance all kinds of silly renewable energy programs if we could get the greenies to buy bonds that matured in 3010.
If computer simulations can be credibly called “research” then my Xbox 360 is obviously illustrating that I missed the opportunity to be one of Canada’s greatest hockey players.
In the model test runs they continually warm without changing co2, you could run them for 10,000 yearas and the would still predict rising temps even if co2 stopped rising tommorow – thats the issue of trusting these black boxes that fail all testing.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044770.shtml
“We estimate that the total ice and water mass loss from the continents is causing global mean sea-level to rise by 1.0 ± 0.4 mm/yr.”
About 4 inches per century, but this is not news worthy so it won’t get reported.
“Ice ages don’t look like fun times:”
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8166/lastglamod.gif
Damn. Doesn’t look good for Canada. The whole country will end up one big hockey rink if we don’t convert the tar sands into CO2 in time.
So it is still only 1.3feet/century. At 400 mm/century it is 4mm/yr (currently 3mm/yr). We should be able to falsify this study in about 10 years or earlier – it looks like sea level could be levelling off (polynomial fit of NSIDC data).
Run for the hills! Oh no, wait, walk VERY slowly to the hills!