Interlinked Climate & Energy Challenges

2009Jan26: Changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a 1,000 years after CO2 emissions stop, according to an article by NOAA scientists that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, the lead author of the study (NOAA).

View larger image http://colli239.fts.educ.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/F4.largePNAS.jpg

Reference: NOAA http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/news/2009/climate_change_irreversible.html

Read the article - Solomon S., G. K. Plattner, R. Knutti, and P. Friedlingstein, 2009, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704

Image Description: From PNAS – “Fig. 4. Illustrative irreversible climate changes as a function of peak carbon dioxide reached. (Upper) Best estimate of expected irreversible dry-season precipitation changes for the regions shown in Fig. 3, as a function of the peak carbon dioxide concentration during the 21st century. The quasi-equilibrium CO2 concentrations shown correspond to 40% remaining in the long term as discussed in the text. The precipitation change per degree is derived for each region as in Fig. 3; see also Fig. S3. The yellow box indicates the range of precipitation change observed during typical major regional droughts such as the “dust bowl” in North America (32). (Lower) Corresponding irreversible global warming (black line). Also shown is the associated lower limit of irreversible sea level rise (because of thermal expansion only based upon a range of 0.2–0.6 m/°C), from an assessment across available models (5). Smaller values (by ?30%) for expected warming, precipitation, and thermal sea level rise would be obtained if climate sensitivity is smaller than the best estimate while larger values (by ?50%) would be expected for the upper end of the estimated likely range of climate sensitivity (49). ” – PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.figures-only Image Permission: This work is copyrighted and unlicensed. However, it is believed that the use of this work to illustrate the subject in question, Where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information, on Interlinked Challenges, hosted on servers in the United States by Michigan State University, qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.