Global Warming: How Hot? How Soon?
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Global Warming: How Hot? How Soon?
Global Warming: How Hot? How Soon?
By Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News
(July 27, 2005) -- A broad scientific census says that Earth is already experiencing significant global warming. So how hot will it get, how soon, and to what effect?
Some climate scientists warn that the pace of global warming could be much more rapid than that predicted even a few years ago.
"Any time you get into projections, you get into a lot of uncertainties. But the [climate] models are getting a lot stronger," said Jay Gulledge, a senior research at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia.
Gulledge says some current projections point to a rise in average global temperature of 0.5°C (slightly less than 1°F) by the year 2030.
The estimates are based on greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere. While the temperature increase is small, it would be significant. Over the past century Earth has warmed about 1°F (0.6°C).
Gulledge cautions, however, that warming rates depend on many factors, some of which have yet to be discovered.
"One of the big unknowns is how society will react," said Antonio Busalacchi, a University of Maryland meteorologist who chairs the climate research committee for the National Academy of Sciences. "Are we going to change?
Meadow Offers Glimpse of Warmer Future
John Harte, an ecosystem sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is already seeing possible future outcomes of global warming.
For 15 years, he has artificially heated sections of a Rocky Mountain meadow by about 3.6°F (2°C) to study the projected effects of global warming.
Harte has documented dramatic changes in the meadow's plant community. Sagebrush, though at the local altitude limit of its natural range, is replacing alpine flowers.
More tellingly, soils in test plots have lost about 20 percent of their natural carbon. This effect, if widespread, could dramatically increase Earth's atmospheric CO2 levels far above even conventional worst-case models.
"Soils around the world hold about five times more carbon than the atmosphere in the form of organic matter," Harte noted.
If similar carbon loss was repeated on a global scale, it could double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
"Now, [the test plot] is just one ecosystem, and you can't make global claims from one alpine meadow," Harte cautioned. "But bogs, prairie, and tundra ecosystem studies are beginning to show similar results."
Vanishing Ice
Elsewhere real-life signs of global climate change blanket the globe.
When Montana's Glacier National Park was established in 1910, it held some 150 glaciers. But now fewer than 30 glaciers remain and they are greatly reduced.
In Tanzania the legendary snows of Mount Kilimanjaro have melted by some 80 percent since 1912 and could be gone by 2020.
"We know that most of the world's small glaciers are shrinking," said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"A few are still advancing. But if you want to see Kilimanjaro or go to Glacier National Park to see glaciers, you'd better go soon. Because they're on their way out."
Arctic regions are feeling even more heat and will be among the most altered over the next few decades.
Temperatures there have already increased as much as 4° to 7°F (3° to 4°C) in the past 50 years—nearly twice the global average.
They're projected to rise 7° to 13°F (4° to 7°C) over the next hundred years, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a multinational study.
Some Arctic coastal communities are already pondering relocation. Thawing permafrost poses an infrastructure disaster, as homes, roads, and pipelines that were built on once-frozen ground begin to shift or sink.
Shrinking Arctic sea ice is melting some three weeks earlier than it did three decades ago, and the trend is expected to continue.
This spells bad news not only for Arctic peoples but for species like the polar bear, which hunts seals on the sea ice.
Global polar bear populations are likely to decline 30 percent over the next 35 to 50 years, according to a recent study issue by the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union.
The bears are not alone. Animals and ecosystems across the planet are likely to be affected by global warming.
Adapting to a Warmer Planet
"The one surprise for me is how rapidly [warming] is happening, how sensitive ecological resources are to climate change," said ecologist Hector Galbraith, of Galbraith Environmental Sciences and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Galbraith expects that over the next two decades, the Earth will see an acceleration of ecosystem changes already under way. Such alterations will include different migration and breeding seasons for some animals and new flowering seasons for plants.
"We're also seeing changes in species distribution. Things like trees can't react too quickly" to climate change, Galbraith said.
"But mobile organisms, like birds, can simply move. We're already seeing major range extensions of species like Acadian flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers."
Such adaptations could mean major and unpredictable ecosystem changes.
"A lot of the northern forests are very susceptible to insect attacks, and songbirds are a major [source of] control," Galbraith continued.
"If the birds move north, forests may be more susceptible to insect attacks, which means more dead wood, which means more fire. The whole nature of the forest can change fairly quickly."
Fires can also be outgrowths of droughts and severe weather, which many scientists expect to increase as the Earth warms.
One such scientist is Sir John Houghton, former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment.
In testimony last week to the United States Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Houghton referenced the unusually extreme heat wave that killed some 20,000 central Europeans during the summer of 2003.
"Careful analysis shows that it is very likely that a large part of the cause of this event is due to increases in greenhouse gases and projects that such summers are likely to be the norm by the middle of the 21st century and cool by the year 2100," Houghton told the committee.
Busalacchi, the University of Maryland meteorologist, cautions that it is difficult to attribute any single extreme weather event to global warming. "But that episode is a very good example of what we expect to see more of in the future," he said.
Like severe weather, many of global warming's near-term effects will be felt regionally, resulting in relative "winners" and "losers."
"There's likely to be a very large disparity of impact between the developed and developing world," said Anthony Janetos, director of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment's global change program.
"We know that there's a large disparity in the capacity to deal with that impact, which creates some challenges for the policy community."
By Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News
(July 27, 2005) -- A broad scientific census says that Earth is already experiencing significant global warming. So how hot will it get, how soon, and to what effect?
Some climate scientists warn that the pace of global warming could be much more rapid than that predicted even a few years ago.
"Any time you get into projections, you get into a lot of uncertainties. But the [climate] models are getting a lot stronger," said Jay Gulledge, a senior research at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia.
Gulledge says some current projections point to a rise in average global temperature of 0.5°C (slightly less than 1°F) by the year 2030.
The estimates are based on greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere. While the temperature increase is small, it would be significant. Over the past century Earth has warmed about 1°F (0.6°C).
Gulledge cautions, however, that warming rates depend on many factors, some of which have yet to be discovered.
"One of the big unknowns is how society will react," said Antonio Busalacchi, a University of Maryland meteorologist who chairs the climate research committee for the National Academy of Sciences. "Are we going to change?
Meadow Offers Glimpse of Warmer Future
John Harte, an ecosystem sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is already seeing possible future outcomes of global warming.
For 15 years, he has artificially heated sections of a Rocky Mountain meadow by about 3.6°F (2°C) to study the projected effects of global warming.
Harte has documented dramatic changes in the meadow's plant community. Sagebrush, though at the local altitude limit of its natural range, is replacing alpine flowers.
More tellingly, soils in test plots have lost about 20 percent of their natural carbon. This effect, if widespread, could dramatically increase Earth's atmospheric CO2 levels far above even conventional worst-case models.
"Soils around the world hold about five times more carbon than the atmosphere in the form of organic matter," Harte noted.
If similar carbon loss was repeated on a global scale, it could double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
"Now, [the test plot] is just one ecosystem, and you can't make global claims from one alpine meadow," Harte cautioned. "But bogs, prairie, and tundra ecosystem studies are beginning to show similar results."
Vanishing Ice
Elsewhere real-life signs of global climate change blanket the globe.
When Montana's Glacier National Park was established in 1910, it held some 150 glaciers. But now fewer than 30 glaciers remain and they are greatly reduced.
In Tanzania the legendary snows of Mount Kilimanjaro have melted by some 80 percent since 1912 and could be gone by 2020.
"We know that most of the world's small glaciers are shrinking," said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"A few are still advancing. But if you want to see Kilimanjaro or go to Glacier National Park to see glaciers, you'd better go soon. Because they're on their way out."
Arctic regions are feeling even more heat and will be among the most altered over the next few decades.
Temperatures there have already increased as much as 4° to 7°F (3° to 4°C) in the past 50 years—nearly twice the global average.
They're projected to rise 7° to 13°F (4° to 7°C) over the next hundred years, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a multinational study.
Some Arctic coastal communities are already pondering relocation. Thawing permafrost poses an infrastructure disaster, as homes, roads, and pipelines that were built on once-frozen ground begin to shift or sink.
Shrinking Arctic sea ice is melting some three weeks earlier than it did three decades ago, and the trend is expected to continue.
This spells bad news not only for Arctic peoples but for species like the polar bear, which hunts seals on the sea ice.
Global polar bear populations are likely to decline 30 percent over the next 35 to 50 years, according to a recent study issue by the polar bear specialist group of the World Conservation Union.
The bears are not alone. Animals and ecosystems across the planet are likely to be affected by global warming.
Adapting to a Warmer Planet
"The one surprise for me is how rapidly [warming] is happening, how sensitive ecological resources are to climate change," said ecologist Hector Galbraith, of Galbraith Environmental Sciences and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Galbraith expects that over the next two decades, the Earth will see an acceleration of ecosystem changes already under way. Such alterations will include different migration and breeding seasons for some animals and new flowering seasons for plants.
"We're also seeing changes in species distribution. Things like trees can't react too quickly" to climate change, Galbraith said.
"But mobile organisms, like birds, can simply move. We're already seeing major range extensions of species like Acadian flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers."
Such adaptations could mean major and unpredictable ecosystem changes.
"A lot of the northern forests are very susceptible to insect attacks, and songbirds are a major [source of] control," Galbraith continued.
"If the birds move north, forests may be more susceptible to insect attacks, which means more dead wood, which means more fire. The whole nature of the forest can change fairly quickly."
Fires can also be outgrowths of droughts and severe weather, which many scientists expect to increase as the Earth warms.
One such scientist is Sir John Houghton, former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment.
In testimony last week to the United States Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Houghton referenced the unusually extreme heat wave that killed some 20,000 central Europeans during the summer of 2003.
"Careful analysis shows that it is very likely that a large part of the cause of this event is due to increases in greenhouse gases and projects that such summers are likely to be the norm by the middle of the 21st century and cool by the year 2100," Houghton told the committee.
Busalacchi, the University of Maryland meteorologist, cautions that it is difficult to attribute any single extreme weather event to global warming. "But that episode is a very good example of what we expect to see more of in the future," he said.
Like severe weather, many of global warming's near-term effects will be felt regionally, resulting in relative "winners" and "losers."
"There's likely to be a very large disparity of impact between the developed and developing world," said Anthony Janetos, director of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment's global change program.
"We know that there's a large disparity in the capacity to deal with that impact, which creates some challenges for the policy community."
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It is getting harder to not to pay attion to this. To many scientists with research is showing this happening. If this is true then we are in trouble. This is scary if true very very very scary. A home on Mars would be a good idea.
Also Mars is warming so it might be because the sun is expending earlier then tought into a red giant? Thats just a theory.
Thousands of scientists would not put there heads on a pike to lie to us. I'm starting to get scared.
Also Mars is warming so it might be because the sun is expending earlier then tought into a red giant? Thats just a theory.
Thousands of scientists would not put there heads on a pike to lie to us. I'm starting to get scared.
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- ConvergenceZone
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The sun go's through a cycle. Which it will slowly get larger...Intill it becomes a red giant star. Its Atoms/Protons will run out then the stars gravtiy will no longer be able to hold the star together. For stars like are sun a nova or a super nova. For smaller stars with less gravity the star just go poof. For larger stars it will have gravity strong enough to make a "Quastar" Or Pulsestar. Or just a star that is about as big as your citie which is moving around very fast.
Before its over we will be fryed chicken with the rest of the planets.
Before its over we will be fryed chicken with the rest of the planets.

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- Aslkahuna
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One Solar Mass stars do not go Supernova but instead end up as White Dwarfs after going through a Planetary Nebula mass shedding phase. A star generally has to be more than 8 times more massive than the Sun to go Supernova. Ordinary novae are not directly a phase of Stellar Evolution but rather a situation where we have a close binary star where one has evolved into a White dwarf and the other has not and we have mass exchange of hydrogen between them. This results in periodic explosions of the hydrogen. If, however, too much mass accumulates on the White Dwarf then it will detonate in what is called a Type Ia Supernova which totally destroys the dwarf star. The Sun will not do that though.
More to the matter at hand, the Sun is a magnetic Variable Star and when it is at magnetic maximum then Solar Activity levels are elevated and the Sun's luminosity increases. We may be in such a period of elevated activity now in which case we would see warming (last magnetic maximum was during the 1st Millenium and early 2nd). Solar Scientists
generally agree that the current levels of elevated activity have probably contributed 30% of the current warming. There are other natural cycles to look at and then there is us. My posiiton is that the current warming is both natural and anthropogenic. We aren't doing it all but we are playing a part.
Steve
More to the matter at hand, the Sun is a magnetic Variable Star and when it is at magnetic maximum then Solar Activity levels are elevated and the Sun's luminosity increases. We may be in such a period of elevated activity now in which case we would see warming (last magnetic maximum was during the 1st Millenium and early 2nd). Solar Scientists
generally agree that the current levels of elevated activity have probably contributed 30% of the current warming. There are other natural cycles to look at and then there is us. My posiiton is that the current warming is both natural and anthropogenic. We aren't doing it all but we are playing a part.
Steve
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- JenBayles
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Aslkahuna wrote:One Solar Mass stars do not go Supernova but instead end up as White Dwarfs after going through a Planetary Nebula mass shedding phase. A star generally has to be more than 8 times more massive than the Sun to go Supernova. Ordinary novae are not directly a phase of Stellar Evolution but rather a situation where we have a close binary star where one has evolved into a White dwarf and the other has not and we have mass exchange of hydrogen between them. This results in periodic explosions of the hydrogen. If, however, too much mass accumulates on the White Dwarf then it will detonate in what is called a Type Ia Supernova which totally destroys the dwarf star. The Sun will not do that though.
More to the matter at hand, the Sun is a magnetic Variable Star and when it is at magnetic maximum then Solar Activity levels are elevated and the Sun's luminosity increases. We may be in such a period of elevated activity now in which case we would see warming (last magnetic maximum was during the 1st Millenium and early 2nd). Solar Scientists
generally agree that the current levels of elevated activity have probably contributed 30% of the current warming. There are other natural cycles to look at and then there is us. My posiiton is that the current warming is both natural and anthropogenic. We aren't doing it all but we are playing a part.
Steve





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This is a disturbing arcticle to say the least as is the one in the global weather forum. Is the earth warming-yes; Has it been warmer in past history yes-the kicker is how much is human civilization playing a part. To me, we are so busy arguing over this point, that nothing gets done. Even if there is only a 10% chance that we are affecting the climate, then we need to do something. For sure, the earth is going to warm and cool over periods of time with us or without us-but we look pretty silly not trying to do our best to miminze our affects. My problems with all these arcticles is that they are retreads of things written since 1995-same stats yet none offer any real solutions to the problems. I think we are now so hung up on the debate that we can't get past it. It is time to act-even if you don't believe in "global warming" cuased by human activity, you really can't deny that Fossil Fuels are a terrible fuel source-they are dirty, not real efficent, and create horrible world politics-on these issues alone we should find an alternate fuel source. My idea: A law: we will go of of fossil fuels in 40 years-that gives us 40 years to develop an new source of energy and then implement with as little economic impact and private proerty issues as possible. (I really don't was to get to a place where the govt. has to everything) In that 40 years, we also begin to clean up fossil fuels as much as possible. Any solution will take a few decades to be ironed out, but now is the time to get the plan going. However, based on the presidents and Congress of the past 60 years (this should have been taken care of by Eisenhower or Kennedy or LBJ) I don't see it happening-niether side of the isle seems to want to really grasp this problem and we have not real good presidential leadersship since prob. Truman (I think LBJ was good, but JFK left him a time bomb in SE Asia-also the death of Bobby K. hurt-again, my opinion)-the new "energy bill" signed by both sides is a great example-it is up to us to put pressure on both parties to get it into gear. Sorry for the rant and if this needs to be deleted fine-but I am just tired of both sides dem. repub, environmentalists, conservatives all just blaming each other while Rome burns around them-it is time for action-real substanitve action.
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My degree is in geology, and in one of my classes we covered this topic. The earth goes through phases, if you will. And the best way I have heard this put is "hot" and "cold" house worlds. Currenlty we are in a hot house world, going into a cold house world. But before this happens, which this CYCLE has been occurring for millions of years and we can see in the rock record, it gets hot. How hot will it get, who knows? How much have we contributed to the problem, probably not much.
Just my two cents....
Just my two cents....
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- Hurricaneman
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I guarantee each and everyone of you that all of this man caused global warming stuff is BS! There is nothing that has happened that is outside of the envelope of what has happened in the past. In fact there are places in the world that are actually cooling, and the ice sheets in Antarctica are growing. It is possible that the activities of man could make a slight (less than one degree F) difference, but I am not even convinced of that.
These fear mongering reports that the Earth is going to warm 10 or more degrees over the next 100 years are LUDICROUS! One must keep in mind there are cycles within cycles with global temperatures. Chances are at least some of the shorter term cycles are going to actually cause cooling in the very near future, like in the next couple of years. I will bet 1 million dollars there will be no more than 2F of warming over the next 100 years, and I think even that much is TREMENDOUSLY unlikely! A small cooling would not be very surprising to me.
I just do not understand why this global warming crap is so widely believed.
These fear mongering reports that the Earth is going to warm 10 or more degrees over the next 100 years are LUDICROUS! One must keep in mind there are cycles within cycles with global temperatures. Chances are at least some of the shorter term cycles are going to actually cause cooling in the very near future, like in the next couple of years. I will bet 1 million dollars there will be no more than 2F of warming over the next 100 years, and I think even that much is TREMENDOUSLY unlikely! A small cooling would not be very surprising to me.
I just do not understand why this global warming crap is so widely believed.
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The article talks about the glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1910. That was just coming out the freaking little ice age. It means nothing that the glaciers have backed off since then. Why don't these clowns ever mention that it was just as warm 1000 years ago than it is now. In fact, it was actually warmer in some regions. I just can't stand people being duped by this junk science!
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