Martinez Silva Ral Enrique Greenhouse Gas Emissions Stopped Now, Earth Would Still Likely Get Warmer,

New Research Shows

ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2011) While governments debate about potential policies that might curb the emission of greenhouse gases, new University of Washington research shows that the world is already committed to a warmer climate because of emissions that have occurred up to now.
There would continue to be warming even if the most stringent policy proposals were adopted, because there still would be some emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. But the new research shows that even if all emissions were stopped now, temperatures would remain higher than pre-Industrial Revolution levels because the greenhouse gases already emitted are likely to persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years. In fact, it is possible temperatures would continue to escalate even if all cars, heating and cooling systems and other sources of greenhouse gases were suddenly eliminated, said Kyle Armour, a UW doctoral student in physics. That's because tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols, which tend to counteract the effect of greenhouse warming by reflecting sunlight back into space, would last only a matter of weeks once emissions stopped, while the greenhouse gases would continue on. "The aerosols would wash out quickly and then we would see an abrupt rise in temperatures over several decades," he said. Armour is the lead author of a paper documenting the research, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. His co-author is Gerard Roe, a UW associate professor of Earth and space sciences. The global temperature is already about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution, which began around the start of the 19th century. The scientists' calculations took into account the observed warming, as well as the known levels of greenhouse gases and aerosols already emitted to see what might happen if all emissions associated with industrialization suddenly stopped. In the best-case scenario, the global temperature would actually decline, but it would remain about a half-degree F higher than pre-Industrial Revolution levels and probably would not drop to those levels again, Armour said. There also is a possibility temperatures would rise to 3.5 degrees F higher than before the Industrial Revolution, a threshold at which climate scientists say significant climate-related damage begins to occur. Of course it is not realistic to expect all emissions to cease suddenly, and Armour notes that the overall effect of aerosols -- particles of sea salt or soot from burning fossil fuels, for example -- is perhaps the largest uncertainty in climate research. But uncertainties do not lessen the importance of the findings, he said. The scientists are confident, from the results of equations they used, that some warming would have to occur even if all emissions stopped now. But there are more uncertainties, and thus a lower confidence level, associated with larger temperature increases. Climate models used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments take into consideration a much narrower range of the possible aerosol effects, or "forcings," than are supported by actual climate observations, Armour said. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel, sponsored by the United Nations, makes periodic assessments of climate change and is in the process of compiling its next report. As emissions of greenhouse gases continue, the "climate commitment" to a warmer planet only goes up, Armour said. He believes it is helpful for policy makers to understand that level of commitment. It also will be helpful for them to understand that, while some warming is assured, uncertainties in current climate observations -- such as the full effect of aerosols -- mean the warming could be greater than models suggest. "This is not an argument to say we should keep emitting aerosols," he said. "It is an argument that we should be smart in how we stop emitting. And it's a call to action because we know the warming we are committed to from what we have emitted already and the longer we keep emitting the worse it gets."

Resumen:
En el artculo nos muestra que el calentamiento global es inevitable ya que as disminuyramos la emisin de gases no descendera la temperatura y que lo nico que podramos hacer es bajar la temperatura a la temperatura que tenia la tierra antes de la revolucin industrial.

Study Bolsters Greenhouse Effect Theory, Solves Ice Age Mystery

ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2005) COLUMBUS, Ohio Critics who dismiss the importance of greenhouse gases as a cause of climate change lost one piece of ammunition this week. In a new study, scientists found further evidence of the role that greenhouse gases have played in Earths climate.
In Thursdays issue of the journal Geology, Ohio State University scientists report that a long-ago ice age occurred 10 million years earlier than once thought. The new date clears up an inconsistency that has dogged climate change research for years. Of three ice ages that occurred in the last half-billion years, the earliest ice age posed problems for scientists, explained Matthew Saltzman, assistant professor of geological sciences at Ohio State. Previous studies suggested that this particular ice age happened during a time that should have been very warm, when volcanoes all over the earths surface were spewing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. With CO2 levels as much as 20 times higher than today, the late Ordovician period (460-440 million years ago) wasnt a good time for growing ice. Critics have pointed to the inconsistency as a flaw in scientists theories of climate change. Scientists have argued that todays global climate change has been caused in part by buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from fossil fuel emissions. But, critics have countered, if CO2 truly raises global temperatures, how could an ice age have occurred when a greenhouse effect much greater than todays was in full swing? The answer: This particular ice age didnt begin when CO2 was at its peak -- it began 10 million years earlier, when CO2 levels were at a low. Our results are consistent with the notion that CO2 concentrations drive climate. Saltzman and doctoral student Seth Young found that large deposits of quartz sand in Nevada and two sites in Europe - Norway and Estonia -- formed around the same time, 440 million years ago. The scientists suspect that the sand formed when water levels fell low enough to expose quartz rock, so that wind and rain could weather the rock into sand. The fact that the deposits were found in three different sites suggests that sea levels may have been low all over the world at that time, likely because much of the planets water was bound in ice at the poles, Saltzman said. Next, the scientists examined limestone sediments from the sites and determined that there was a relatively large amount of organic carbon buried in the oceans -- and, by extension, relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere -- at the same time. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the ice began to build up some 10 million years earlier than when volcanoes began pumping the atmosphere full of the CO2 that ended the Ordovician ice age. For Saltzman, the find solves a long-standing mystery. Though scientists know with a great degree of certainty that atmospheric CO2 levels drive climate change, there are certain mismatches in the geologic record, such as the Ordovician ice age -- originally thought to have begun 443 million years ago -- that seem to counter that view. How can you have ice when CO2 levels are through the roof? That was the dilemma that we were faced with. I think that now we have good evidence that resolves this mismatch, Saltzman said. Scientists at the three sites previously attributed these quartz deposits to local tectonic shifts. But the new study shows that the conditions that allowed the quartz sand to form were not local. If sea level is dropping globally at the same time, it cant be a local tectonic feature, Saltzman said. Its got to be the result of a global ice buildup. Saltzman wants to bolster these new results by examining sites in Russia -- where he hopes to find more evidence of sea level drop -- and in parts of South America and North Africa, which would have been covered in ice at the time.