World would heat by 10C if all fossil fuels are burned - new research
Mon 23 May 2016
View all news
New research finds that the Earth would warm by 10 degrees Celsius if all the fossil fuels potentially available are burned, leaving some regions uninhabitable and resulting in profound changes elsewhere. Meanwhile, according to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in March 2015.
The research, by the University of Victoria in Canada, also found that the Arctic would heat up by 20C by 2300.
“I think it is really important to know what would happen if we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change,” said Katarzyna Tokarska, at the University of Victoria in Canada and who led the new research (reported in The Guardian). “Even though we have the Paris climate change agreement, so far there hasn’t been any action. [This research] is a warning message.”
The Guardian reports that carbon already emitted by burning fossil fuels has driven significant global warming, with 2016 near certain to succeed 2015 as the hottest year ever recorded, which itself beat a record year in 2014. Other recent studies have shown that extreme heatwaves could push the climate beyond human endurance in parts of the world such as the Gulf, making them uninhabitable.
For the first time since we began tracking carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere, the monthly global average concentration of this greenhouse gas surpassed 400 parts per million in March 2015, according to NOAA’s latest results.
“It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally,” said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012. In 2013 the record at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400 ppm threshold. Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone.
“This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times,” added Tans. “Half of that rise has occurred since 1980.”
The UK government recently granted the fracking firm Third Energy permission to carry out test drilling at a site Ryedale, North Yorkshire, despite widespread local opposition and protest. Critics of the decision to encourage fracking in the UK say it is incompatible with reducing greenhouse gas emissions as recently agreed by 195 nations in Paris.
Related Links
< Back to news list