Aug. 5, 2013 — Future warming from fossil fuel burning could be more intense and longer-lasting than previously thought. This prediction emerges from a new study by Richard Zeebe at the University of Hawai'i who includes insights from episodes of climate change in the geologic past to inform projections of human-made future climate change. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Humans keep adding large amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, among them carbon dioxide (CO[SUB]2[/SUB]), the most important human-made greenhouse gas. Over the past 250 years, human activities such as fossil fuel burning have raised the atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentration by more than 40% over its preindustrial level of 280 ppm (parts per million). In May 2013, the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentration in Earth's atmosphere surpassed a milestone of 400 ppm for the first time in human history, a level that many scientists consider dangerous territory in terms of its impact on Earth's climate.
A global cooling calamity as depicted in the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow,' though, is very unlikely to be the result of climate change. The globe is likely to become warmer in the near future, and probably a lot warmer in the distant future. Now Zeebe, Professor of Oceanography in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai'i at M
Humans keep adding large amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, among them carbon dioxide (CO[SUB]2[/SUB]), the most important human-made greenhouse gas. Over the past 250 years, human activities such as fossil fuel burning have raised the atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentration by more than 40% over its preindustrial level of 280 ppm (parts per million). In May 2013, the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] concentration in Earth's atmosphere surpassed a milestone of 400 ppm for the first time in human history, a level that many scientists consider dangerous territory in terms of its impact on Earth's climate.
A global cooling calamity as depicted in the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow,' though, is very unlikely to be the result of climate change. The globe is likely to become warmer in the near future, and probably a lot warmer in the distant future. Now Zeebe, Professor of Oceanography in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai'i at M