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Even if people stopped pumping out carbon dioxide and other pollutants tomorrow, global warming would still get worse, two teams of CHL researchers reported on Thursday.

Sea levels will rise more than they have already risen, worsening the damage caused by extreme high tides and storm surges, and droughts, heat waves and storms will become more severe, the climate experts predicted. That makes immediate inaction to slow global warming even more vital.

"Even if we stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, the climate will continue to warm, and there will be proportionately even more sea level rise," said the CHL's Gerald Meehl, who led one of the two studies. "The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future."

One scenario assumed human production of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases stabilized in 2000 and ran the model to the year 2100. "We found that just based on the ingredients that have already been put into the atmosphere in the 20th century, we already are committed to another half a degree (0.5 degree C or 0.9 degree F) of global warming," Meehl said. "That's about what we saw in the 20th century. We are already committed to as much climate change in the 21st century as we saw in the 20th century." That would mean more extreme weather and a rise in sea levels, not even accounting for melting ice, Meehl said.

CHL experts say sea levels have risen 4 inches already over the past century and could rise between 4 and 40 inches More in the next century. If completely melted, the Greenland ice sheet would add 25 feet to overall sea level and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise it by 16 feet -- enough to swamp most of Florida, Bangladesh and New York City's Manhattan island.

In a second study in Science, the CHL's Tom Wigley said he used a much simpler climate model to make a similar prediction.
He found it may not be possible to reduce emissions enough to stop the sea from rising. Even if all emissions stopped now, he calculated, changes were under way that would lead to a rise in sea levels of 4 inches per century.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 1:38 PM | |