Climate change accelerates

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Sunday, 03 February 2008

Climate could change dramatically in the near future (courtesy. photocase.com)
Climate change is happening, now and during the last century. Scientists from the university of Bern, Switzerland, now published new data about the speed of anthropogenic climate change. They compared CO₂, N₂0 and CH₄ (the most important gases responsible for greenhouse effect) over a period of the last 20.000 years. They used antarctic ice cores containing air locks of the monitored period. The investigation showed that the slopes of the global warming gases never before were so alarming high in the last 16.000 years as during the 20th century.

Steep slope in CO2

Global warming gas concentration in the athmosphere influence the radiative forcing which is a benchmark of the relation between the insolation and the emitted energy from the earth surface back into the space. The radiation forcing can be positve (measured in Watts/squaremeter) which means warming of the athmosphere, or can be negative which means cooling of the athmosphere.
Naturally such oscillations between a positve and a negative radiative forcing always happened but never before in the last 20.000 a tenfold increase in CO₂-radiation forcing occured as during the last century indicating a massive human influence by burning fossile energy sources like oil, gas and coal.
In the last 20 years the concentration of CO₂ increased by 33 ppm (parts per million) which usually took 1600 years in the preindustrial times of mankind history.

Man accelerates climate changes.

By comparing the changes of the most important greenhouse gases within a 40 years period in recent times with former 40-year periods the authors of the study could show that man made climate change never was so quick before as recently. If no means are taken to reduce the emmission of global warming gases mankind will maybe faces environmental changes that could exceed our capability to react fast enough and could challenge the future of our specie.

Source:
F. Joos and R. Spahni: Rates of change in natural and anthropogenic radiative forcing over the past 20,000 years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), 2008.

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