A new study says the Earth’s temperature is even more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide than previously believed.
“We should expect a couple of degrees of continued warming even if we held carbon dioxide concentrations at the current level,” warns Mark Pagani, an associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University. Pagani was the lead author of a study about the effects that slow changes such as melting ice sheets had on initial warming caused by greenhouse gases. Christina Revelo of UCSC, who coauthored the study, said that the Earth’s temperature is even more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide than previously believed.
The study was based on an analysis of sediment cores drilled six different seafloor locations worldwide in an effort to reconstruct the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past 5 million years. The researchers found that even short-term changes in sea ice and water vapor levels can impact other warming factors such as the extent of ice sheets and continental vegetation that affect global warming. In other words, even maintaining current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—an ideal scenario under the Copenhagen agreement—could result in rising temperatures. Read more at the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
