FILE: The photo from the January 10, 2009 file shows a flock of geese flying past a chimney at the Jeffery Energy Center coal-fired power plant near Emmitt, Kan. A new study says the amount of global warming that had already taken place in the air due to past carbon pollution is enough to exceed internationally agreed climate limits. A study conducted on Monday, January 4, 2021 takes a different look at what is called compromised warming that comes from the gases that trap heat that remain in the atmosphere for more than a century. (Photo AP / Charlie Riedel, file)
FILE: The photo from the January 10, 2009 file shows a flock of geese flying past a chimney at the Jeffery Energy Center coal-fired power plant near Emmitt, Kan. A new study says the amount of global warming that had already taken place in the air due to past carbon pollution is enough to exceed internationally agreed climate limits. A study conducted on Monday, January 4, 2021 takes a different look at what is called compromised warming that comes from the gases that trap heat that remain in the atmosphere for more than a century. (Photo AP / Charlie Riedel, file)
According to a new study, the amount of global warming in the furnace, resulting from carbon pollution already in the air, is enough to wipe out internationally agreed targets to limit climate change.
But it’s not over because, while this amount of warming may be inevitable, it could be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops emitting additional greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and natural gas, according to the study authors.
For decades, scientists have talked about so-called “compromised warming” or future temperature rise based on past carbon dioxide emissions that remain in the atmosphere for more than a century. It’s like the distance a speeding car travels after applying the brakes.
But Monday’s study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculates that a little differently and now calculates that the carbon pollution already occurring in the air will cause global temperatures to reach about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) from warming from the preindustrial era.
Previous estimates, including those accepted by international scientific groups, were approximately one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the amount of warming committed.
International climate agreements set goals to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with the more ambitious goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Celsius). , 7 degrees Fahrenheit) added to Paris in 2015. The world has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
“You have some … inertia of global warming that will keep the climate system warming, and that’s basically what we’re calculating,” said study co-author Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at the Texas A&M University. “Think of the climate system as the Titanic. It’s hard to turn the boat around when you see the icebergs. “
Dessler and colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and Nanjing University in China calculated the warming involved to take into account that the world has warmed at different rates in different places and that places which have not warmed up so quickly are destined to recover.
Places like the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, are a little cooler, and this difference creates low clouds that reflect more sun away from the earth, keeping those places cooler. But this situation cannot continue indefinitely because physics determines that colder places will heat up more, and when they do, clouds will shrink and more warming will occur, Dessler said.
Previous studies were based on keeping cooler places that way, but Dessler and colleagues say it’s not likely.
External experts said the work is based on compelling reasoning, but they want more research to prove it is true. Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, said the new work fits better with climate models than with observational data.
Dessler, because the world is bound to achieve more warming than international goals, does not mean that everything is lost in the fight against global warming., who warned of what he called “climate destroyers.”
If the world achieves zero net carbon emissions soon, 2 degrees of global warming could be delayed enough for it not to happen for centuries, giving society time to adapt or even come up with technological solutions, he said.
“If we don’t, we will be exploiting (climate goals) in a few decades,” Dessler said. “It’s really the warming rate that makes climate change so terrible. If we got a few degrees over 100,000 years, it wouldn’t be that great. We can deal with that. But a few degrees for 100 years is really bad.
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