GHG Daily
2/9/2016
The amount of carbon emitted from burning of fossils fuels could produce climate impacts that extend for tens of thousands of years, researchers said in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“Much of the carbon we are putting in the air from burning fossil fuels will stay there for thousands of years – and some of it will be there for more than 100,000 years,” lead author Peter Clark, an Oregon State University paleoclimatologist, said in a press release issued Monday by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “People need to understand that the effects of climate change on the planet won’t go away, at least not for thousands of generations.”
The research team included scientists from Oregon State, the Lawrence Livermore, and other institutions.
Global warming today can be seen today in rising sea levels, but this is just the beginning, the scientists found. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that sea levels are expected to be up by 1 meter in the year 2100, the new article considers four scenarios in which sea levels rise by roughly 25 meters if the global temperature spike can be held to 2 degrees Celsius to a dire case in which the sea rise could hit 50 meters in a period of centuries to millennia if warming reaches 7 degrees Celsius. A massive cut back on fossil fuel use in coming decades would be needed to hold to the low number, while using 50 percent of existing fossil fuels in the next few centuries would lead to the higher number, the study says.
Even the low-end scenario would directly impact 1.3 billion people, roughly one-fifth of the world’s current population, according to the study. That number would increase if the warming and sea rise increase.
