Nuuk beachfront real estate

Greenland can warm 2-4�C in one year

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 11:43 PM on 21 Jun 2008

Read more about: climate | climate change impacts | climate science | Greenland

A new article in Science Express (PDF)($ub. req'd), "High-Resolution Greenland Ice Core Data Show Abrupt Climate Change Happens in Few Years," examines, "The last two abrupt warmings at the onset of our present warm interglacial period." The article explores the underlying causes of ...

... abrupt shifts of northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation resulting in 2-4�K changes in Greenland moisture source temperature from one year to the next.

The article concludes that

... polar atmospheric circulation can shift in 1-3 years resulting in decadal to centennial scale changes from cold stadials to warm interstadials/interglacials associated with astounding Greenland temperature changes of 10�K. Neither the magnitude of such shifts nor their abruptnesses are currently captured by state of the art climate models.

The time to act is yesterday.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Conveyor

So the Gulf Stream conveyor could stop in a few years after the arctic ice and greenland glaciers melt? That's the global thermostat.

What about the southern ocean conveyors? Around antarctica? Would that throw the northern pacific rim into a glacial state as well?

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 9:35 PM on 22 Jun 2008

Complex systems

Complex systems (like our climate), when forced (like by elevated levels of greenhouse gas in the air causing increased accumulation of heat), tend to initially resist change, then when they pass a tipping point, abruptly change to a new stable state.

"We now have evidence from the Earth's history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die." (The Revenge of Gaia)

In other words, the complex system that is our climate is moving to a new stable hot state. Soon, due to the rapid rate of warming, ecosystem will rapidly collapse (i.e. abrupt climate change):

"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07

There is a very inexpensive simple way to immediately cool the Earth: just put a small amount of aerosol into the air to dim the sun. We won't be able to stop abrupt climate change (i.e. rapid ecosystem collapse) without geoengineering.

by dobermanmacleod at 4:27 AM on 09 Jul 2008

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