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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David,UK actually hit it on the nail head noting that the targets of this fictitious propaganda are gullible liberal socialists and the massive sheep population (more voters than us). It is really a near impossible argument to try to present reality to them. They think all things are the responsibility of government to control / fix. I know this, my wife happens to be a very Socialist Social Worker….Don’t ask. I have completely given up any further attempts to help her see reason regarding socialism. I just don’t go there; much better sex. We are expecting -11 F here in Colorado tonight after a high of +10 F daytime (historical average high and low here are +43 and +15 F); last winter came early and ran late; i am just letting her live it out.
As far as the next 1,000 years; it is funny, everything I have seen points to us plummeting way beyond little ice age levels into the abyss of the next cycle of glacial advance sometime between now and then. I think we (our decedents) will be frantically looking for ways to heat things up. And since CO2 levels will plummet to dangerously low levels, they will probably pump all that sequestered CO2 back into the atmosphere, thinking it will make a difference (while praising their forethought), rather than use it in greenhouses for food while they ride out 80-90K years of ice.
How many miles high and dry inland will all the vital shipping ports be? And, of course, many of those undersea oil wells will be high and dry; that’s a good thing.
And well, when that cycle ends comes the real flooding and the warmers will be back at it.
What if… we stopped giving Dr. Shawn Marshall money?
Dave Andrews says:
January 10, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Steven Mosher, Jan 10 12.18pm,
Are you sure you’re not being drawn into the paradigm of believing the models because you’re so involved in analysing them? I believe there was some research a few years back that found, in effect, that modellers began to believe their models were the reality rather than the real world situation.
###########
No. in my world there isnt such a thing as “belief” in models. A model is a tool for understanding, explaining and predicting. It’s got a measure of skill or usefulness that is never perfect. All physical laws are “models.” The very isolated point I was trying to make was this. Weather is an initial value problem. “climate” long term averages is a boundary condition problem. There are plenty of problems with climate models, but the observation about getting the weather wrong misses the point. there are BETTER criticisms. If you watch Palmer you will see. The strongest arguments against the models come from WITHIN. Mistaking initial value problems for boundary value problems is a mistake. I’m suggesting people look at the real issues.
This is an emotive subject.
My response to various replies is as follows.
John Kehr – it does appear to be more of a religion.
David UK- yes – big problem, no-one eems to understand the basics of science any more – eg, carbon cycle.
Robinson – something similar comes to mind with the Met…
Henry P – I have an inkling that we are in for a bit of cooling.
KDK – no rush -let’s all get a tan then think about it.
Peter M… got it! Nutshell job!
I’m afraid that this is as far as I have got.
Not so good, but you get my drift.
Joyfire says:
January 10, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Is it true that CO2 is naturally produced in the atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays and nitrogen atoms? I believe the process is called nuclear electron capture.
Yes it is, though be aware that the process produces the isotope carbon-14 rather than the more common carbon-12. This phenomenon is what is used to provide “radio-carbon dating”.
Googling around the technical aspects of carbon-dating should provide you with more answers than I can.
I am a long time lurker on this website and I have only recently come across these claims. Since it is a fact that cosmic rays are increasing to levels that NASA believes we have not seen in hundreds of years, the production of carbon and many other different elements that are formed naturally in the sky in very small amounts should also increase . I am not a chemist and I wonder if anyone would have a definitive answer and some references. I would imagine others would be interested in the answer too.
Thanks
Estimates of the amount of natural carbon 14 used to be made as it helped improve the accuracy of carbon dating. However since the atmospheric nuclear tests of the 50’s (which produced a lot of “unnatural” carbon-14) basically stopped carbon dating from being useful for anything newer than the 50s, I don’t know if these estimates are still made.
hmm. One generation is about 20 yrs. So now I have to make sure that my
(48 X) great grandchildren don’t live near the coast. Scares the poop out of me.
/sarc off.
Check out the GISP2 ice core temperatures for the last 10,500 years. Temperatures today are about 0.4C higher than 100 to 300 years ago. During the Medieval Warming Period temps peaked ~1.2C higher than today. During the Roman Warming Period ~2000 ybp temps peaked ~2.2C higher. During the Minoan Warming Period ~3300 ybp temps peaked ~ 3.0C higher. (R. B. Alley, Journal of Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol.19:213-226).
To look at the temperature today and claim it is totally due to man is a joke!
Tony says:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/abandon-all-hope-ye-who-read-this/#comment-570520
Exactly the reason I say we should let the buggers close a power station or two.
The green idiots thought they would shut Ratcliffe on Soar for 3 days. They know so little they didn’t realise that after the shutdown it would take several days to a week to get it back to capacity.
Let the public get at them afterwards!
DaveE.
Hah! A thousand years is nothing! I know a “scientist” who predicted the shape of things to come 800,000 years from now. His name was H G Wells.
Not sure which projection I find more credible…
That is crystal clear not science at all. It is porno climatology. Give me money…
Dave Andrews says:
January 10, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Steven Mosher, Jan 10 12.18pm,
Are you sure you’re not being drawn into the paradigm of believing the models because you’re so involved in analysing them? I believe there was some research a few years back that found, in effect, that modellers began to believe their models were the reality rather than the real world situation.
———–
Since I am interested in this question from a fisheries perspective I would love to know what that study was. Dave, any chance you could narrow down the reference? Thanks! (Even if you can’t!)
Here’s a what if. What if … the general configuration of the continents coupled with the general nature of the current climate system, puts an end to the 10K year sweet spot we’ve been in, during which everything we call “Civilization” has occurred. In fact, this is not a what if, it is a when.
We are at the end of an interglacial within a multimillion year ice age.
izen says:
January 10, 2011 at 7:29 am
“Previous large increases in CO2 such as the PETM event took several THOUSAND years for CO2 levels to return to pre-event levels. The timescale of geological sequestration out of the active biological cycle is measured in millenia not centuries.”
————–
So let’s say Oceans and Plants are pulling about 4 billion tons of Carbon out of the atmosphere each year (the actual number).
How long does it take to get back to 280 ppm if emissions stopped tomorrow? Warning, heavy math required for a pro-AGW supporter.
Second question, how much Carbon was added to the atmosphere during the PETM? Warning, someone had to be there measuring the quantity released each year over the 5,000 years in question. Hint, where did it come from. How many years did those massive north Atlantic volcano / mantle plumes last? Was that more or less than humans are adding each year right now?
Questions instead of answers because I encourage everyone to try the math for themselves so that they do not continue parroting the latest global warming myths.
Luboš Motl of “the reference frame” has a nice write up about this political advocacy dressed up as research.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/01/weather-in-year-3000-once-again.html
“George E. Smith says:
So I know who these three genii are; but who the hell are those other 17 people on the list ?”
4) Boris Johnson. Mayor of London.
5) David Beckham. Soccer player.
6) Ken Livingstone. Former GLC leader of London, nicknamed “Red Ken”.
9) Gwyneth Paltrow. Actress.
12) Robbie Williams. Entertainer.
14) Leonardo DiCaprio. Actor.
17) Graham Norton. TV entertainer/comedian.
Those that I recognise…
Laurence M. Sheehan said on January 10, 2011 at 9:18 am
Unfortunately Greg Craven is currently too busy as the AGU (Anti-society Geopolitical Union) spokescreature. (References: one, two)
Well, he teaches those subjects, I can’t confirm that he knows them. However, “Canada Research Chair in Climate Change” sounds pretty light in the scientific knowledge requirements, shouldn’t be a problem if he becomes available.
Got a hacker to get me the computer code…
Const ScarySoundingAnomoly = 0.0049977363 ‘degrees per year
Function EarthTemperatureAnomoly(theYear as Long) as Long
‘Proprietary Calculation for future temperature anomolies
‘In case of FOI Request, delete immediately
EarthTemperatureAnomoly = (theYear – Year(Now)) * ScarySoundingAnomoly
End Function
Private Sub Command1_Click
On Error BlameBush
msgbox “Temperature Anomoly in the Year ” & Text1.Text & “is ” & _
vba.format$(EarthTemperatureAnomoly(Text1.Text), “0.000000000000”)
End_Sub
How can a reputable journal publish this as science? Predicting something is going to happen 1000 years from now is easy. No one will be around to remember if you were wrong. If you are right no one will remember that you were correct either. I cannot think of one man made prediction made a 1000 years ago that has come true today. If one had a set of equations that describe some phenomena as a function of time such as motion of a comet around the sun, generally one could get a result for a thousand years. In this case the motion of the comet and the planets and the sun are well understood and previous predictions have come true. Are the phenomena of climate change understood well enough to make a prediction for the next decade let alone a century? This is not science, it is hoopla!
Good to see you haven’t comploded from all the noise in klimate science, SteveSadlov. Indeed, I’m one of the fortunates that prefers cold weather and, as a skier, I can dress for it, too. 🙂
Mark
Anthony has featured another of the birds that flock together (wish they would flock off), on this thread; http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/07/geoengineering-global-scale-nano-nuttiness/ . The Uni of Calgary has GOT to shake some of the nut-jobs out their tree.
Perhaps this parody is nearer the truth?
A team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Hoaxing and the University of Caligula has published a study alleging that the earth will heat up every year for the next thousand years, culminating with a complete burn-off of earth’s atmosphere, like has never been seen before. By 2250, snow will be non-existent, and despite the death of all human life in 2275, man-made CO2 will continue to increase due to the oil and coal powered robots that will continue to crank out products that robot trucks deliver to robot stocked WalMart stores. Even without humans, the earth will continue to heat for another 750 years until lead and aluminum (aluminium for you UK folks) will flow molten on the ground.
“We created several ‘what if’ scenarios,” says Dr. Shawn O’Thedead, Chair of the Climate Change subcommittee and Associate Professor of Abnormal Psychology. “This forecast was made possible by the copious amounts of medical marijuana and munchies that we procured as “office supplies” using our National Science Foundation grant monies. We asked ourselves, what if we completely stopped using fossil fuels but the man-made robots continued to burn fuel and dump more CO2 in the atmosphere? How long would it then take at current UEA CRU modeled climate change trends for things to become worse?”
At first, the team’s answers weren’t scary enough, so they consumed more marijuana and munchies before trying again. The team’s next exploration produced a real corker of a forecast, that showed that, even if the sun were to shut-down completely, CO2 forcing would create a GHG heating sufficient to incinerate all plant and animal life, and leave most metals in a liquid state on the arid land and in the empty oceans. These scenarios beginning in 2010 and in 2100 prove without a doubt that all water vapor will boil off the planet, leaving only CO2 to blanket the destroyed earth.
To not be too gloomy, the research team did show that if 85% of the industrialized nations’ wealth were turned over to the IPCC, WWF, GreenPeace, Michael Mann, Phil Jones and the UEA CRU, then the climate models predict BBQ summers of warm and mild weather followed by cheerful and cool winters, with a rosy forecast lasting until 3585. Dr Teriffa, Associate Professor of Jungian Threeringology, assured the huddled masses of neo-journalists that this massive transfer of wealth will save the planet, even if mankind does not stop and actually increases the amount of anthropogenic CO2 production.
Is my sarcasm flag flying high enough to be seen from the next century?
I am seriously ashamed that Canadians and Calgarians have joined ‘the team’. They are obviously looking for more handouts to finesse their results for years and years. Everyone is looking for their own niche to abuse.
So in year 3000 earth is destroyed by a meteorite? explodes?
Z says:
January 10, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Thanks for the reply. I did not think of the problem of nuclear bomb testing and the production of more carbon 14, but that is also of some interest. At the moment, with all the interest in CO2, I would have thought there would be more focus on the science that provides the details of the rate of natural production versus the rate of manmade production. Well, I am sure there must be somebody somewhere that has looked into this more carefully, but there is little or no publicity because the answer might be an inconvenient truth…
Surely this is a comedy sketch from Coco… “In the year three thousand…. in the year three thousand…”