Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. & 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 yrs

[RedEarth]

UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

Posted By Joe On September 28, 2009 @ 9:41 pm In Science | 28 Comments

Finally, some of the top climate modelers in the world have done a “plausible worst case scenario,” as Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, put it today in a terrific and terrifying talk (audio here <1>, PPT here <2>).

No, I’m not taking about a simple analysis of what happens if the nation and the world just keep on our current emissions path. We’ve known that end-of-century catastrophe for a while (see “M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F <3>“). I’m talking about running a high emissions scenario (i.e. business as usual) in one of the few global climate models capable of analyzing strong carbon cycle feedbacks. This is what you get :




The key point is that while this warming occurs between 1961-1990 and 2090-2099 for the high-end scenarios without carbon cycle feedbacks, in about 10% of Hadley’s model runs with the feedbacks, it occurs around 2060. Betts calls that the “plausible worst case scenario.” It is something the IPCC and the rest of the scientific community should have laid out a long time ago.

As the Met Office notes here <4>, “In some areas warming could be significantly higher (10 degrees or more)”:


•The Arctic could warm by up to 15.2 °C <27.4 °F> for a high-emissions scenario, enhanced by melting of snow and ice causing more of the Sun’s radiation to be absorbed.
•For Africa, the western and southern regions are expected to experience both large warming (up to 10 °C <18 °F>) and drying.
•Some land areas could warm by seven degrees <12.6 F> or more.
•Rainfall could decrease by 20% or more in some areas, although there is a spread in the magnitude of drying. All computer models indicate reductions in rainfall over western and southern Africa, Central America, the Mediterranean and parts of coastal Australia.
•In other areas, such as India, rainfall could increase by 20% or more. Higher rainfall increases the risk of river flooding.

........more

http://climateprogress.org/2009/09/28/uk-met-office-catastrophic-climate-change-could-happen-with-50-years/#more-11977

[imdjh]

1. Giants could roam the earth in 50 years.

A comet could hit the earth in 50 years.

Judgement Day could come in 50 years.

[Omar4Dems]

6. Giants are already here

They play Arizona tonight.

[phantom power]

2. 4 degrees over 50 years seems to be the "official consensus" prediction these days.

Which, by the way, is plenty bad.

13-18 degrees would be the true bibilical apocalypse.

[kestrel91316]

3. Uh oh. Don't buy a big bag of people food.

[Double T]

4. Another 3+ billion people will insure even higher temperatures..........

and the demise of most life on this planet. But like the economy, if we ignore the reality, it will certainly go away.......

[autorank]

5. k*r But what will the G-20 do?

They know this from their own scientists but they do nothing.

This will probably happen, or something worse.

The only chance is a series of seemingly randomly connected innovations by people in their garages,
kids for science fairs, linux type projects of scientists collaborating.

As a world culture, we wre incapable of addressing this issue. If there were an effort organized
by the governments, it would simply be a pork barrell, compromised filled joke. But they can't even
get to the joke stage.

This is valuable information. Thank you.

[endless october]

7. that's significantly higher than the prevailing models.

i'm skeptical that this scenario is the one we're going to see.

still, i would like to see a lot more nuclear power in this country. let's make it happen.

[RedEarth]

8. It is higher that most scenarios, however, M. I. T.'s latest study, while lower,

isn't very encouraging.

Again from Dr. Joe Romm on 5/20/09 at Climate Progress.......

M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F

Why the change in the 2009 modeling, compared to 2003? The Program’s website explains <13>:

There is no single revision that is responsible for this change. In our more recent global model simulatations, the ocean heat-uptake is slower than previously estimated, the ocean uptake of carbon is weaker, feedbacks from the land system as temperature rises are stronger, cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases over the century are higher, and offsetting cooling from aerosol emissions is lower. No one of these effects is very strong on its own, and even adding each separately together would not fully explain the higher temperatures. Rather than interacting additively, these different affects appear to interact multiplicatively, with feedbacks among the contributing factors, leading to the surprisingly large increase in the chance of much higher temperatures.

Andrew Freedman at washingtonpost.com <15> had one of the very few stories on this important study back in February and reprints this useful figure from MIT:



He explains:

Results of the studies are depicted online in MIT’s “Greenhouse Gamble <16>” exercise that conveys the “range of probability of potential global warming” via roulette wheel graphics (shown above). The modeling output showed that under both a “no policy” scenario and one in which nations took action beginning in the next few years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the odds have shifted in favor of larger temperature increases.

For the no policy scenario, the researchers concluded that there is now a nine percent chance (about one in 11 odds) that the global average surface temperature would increase by more than 7°C (12.6°F) by the end of this century, compared with only a less than one percent chance (one in 100 odds) that warming would be limited to below 3°C (5.4°F).

To repeat, on our current emissions path, we have a 9% chance of an incomprehensibly catastrophic warming of 7°C by century’s end, but less than a 1% chance of under 3°C warming.

“The take home message from the new greenhouse gamble wheels is that if we do little or nothing about lowering greenhouse gas emissions that the dangers are much greater than we thought three or four years ago,” said Ronald G. Prinn, professor of atmospheric chemistry at MIT. “It is making the impetus for serious policy much more urgent than we previously thought.”

The time to act is now.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/20/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections-2/print/

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, RedEarth.

[CalvinandHobbes]

10. There will be cooling for the next ten or so years,

Climate scientists have already admitted that so why should we believe that they can predict what the climate will be if they missed this massive ten yr cooling period? And how can the lack of sun spots for the next ten years cause cooling if greenhouse gasses cause warming.
I think the lack of action by the Govt tells me all i need to know about the real percieved threat.