Earth-Solar Cycle Spurs Greenhouse Gases - Studies

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=4e5aae1e1ecc7c69&cat=89d96798a39564bd

WASHINGTON - Greenhouse gases are known to spur global warming, but scientists said on Monday that global warming in turn spurs greenhouse gas emissions -- which means Earth could get hotter faster than climate models predict.


Two scientific teams, one in Europe and another in California, reached the same basic conclusion: when Earth has warmed up in the past, due to the sun's natural cycles, more greenhouse gases have been spewed into the atmosphere.
As greenhouse gas levels rose, so did Earth's temperature, the scientists reported.

Earth has not endlessly warmed up, though, because these natural solar cycles ended, letting the planet cool down and prompting a corresponding drop in greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists reported.


snip...
It means the warming is happening faster, each decade is actually warming faster than it would have," Torn said in a telephone interview. "It's the pace of change that will be one of the big problems. It's how humans adapt and the cost that will depend on the rate of change of climate
snip...

The European team estimated that global warming in the next century may be 15 percent to 78 percent higher than current estimates because these predictions fail to take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide emissions
more...

WHOAH what a could be 15-78% thats a pretty wide spread there???

[stepnw1f]

1. The Earth Could Heat Up Infinitesimally Faster

A chain reaction can lead to something sudden rather than something that takes time to happen. The terror should be based on science, not boogie men conjured by the White House.

[alfredo]

3. Do you remember scientist saying that Venus was an

example of the greenhouse effect going out of control?

[stepnw1f]

7. Actually I Did Hear That Theory

I believe I watched a program on the Science Channel that briefly talked about this theory as well as reading about it online somewhere.

[patcox2]

10. Can't happen here, though.

Part of the reason for Venus' dense atmosphere is that it has no moon.

[alfredo]

15. How does having a moon affect our atmosphere?

[eppur_se_muova]

17. It was the discovery that Venus was so hot that brought the greenhouse ...

effect to scientific attention. It was once thought that Venus would be inhabitable (even by humans) but it turned out to be MUCH hotter than predicted based on greater proximity to the sun. The explanation turned out to be the huge greenhouse warming caused by Venus's CO2-rich atmosphere.

If you read old science fiction from the 30's and 40's (and who hasn't?) Venus was a favorite setting for adventure stories, even more than Mars, because the clouds over Venus suggested a very humid planet, and most SF stories of the day assumed Venus was covered in wild jungle, or else mostly ocean. These settings were actually based on scenarios put forward by serious scientists, but without the ability to see beneath the cloud cover, almost any hypothesis seemed consistent with what little was known. The reality of the situation was a real letdown for a lot of people, not just SF authors and fans.

[alfredo]

23. We don't know when this warming will end, or where it will end.

Life on the surface might end as we know it. Nobody is saying, even if they knew.

[krkaufman]

21. Not "infintesimally" .... exponentially

And those numbers are likely to be corrected over and over, as previously not considered triggers make themselves obvious. (Like the methane being released from ages-old glaciers.)

[politicat]

2. Climate runs on a Magic gate principle.

Once we reach a tipping point, we go through the gate and then it's a point of no return. Atmospheric heat leads to permafrost melt leads to more atmospheric methane leads to atmospheric warming leads to permafrost melt...

And yes, it gets faster with each cycle. Only a politician or an oil exec could fail to see it in the math. (I am NOT a maths specialist, but I can see it in the Nature articles on climate change.)

The real unknown is how the upper atmospheric cooling (because upper atmospheric particles like ozone used to absorb heat, but ozone eaters reflect it) and the lower atmosphere warming (because of human activities) are going to react. We haven't been able to model that yet.

[xchrom]

4. re: upper atmosphere cooling -- the heating

could be part of a process which preceeds ice ages.

ice ages are one of the predicted out comes of global warming -- which is truly frightening.

[teknomanzer]

6. This is going to sound overly simplistic...

and its really just a guess, but I wonder if anyone know where I might possibly get confirmation on this idea. Okay, so the the icecaps melt and greenhouse gases increase for a while you get a warmer wetter climate, but could increased cloud coverage begin to reflect the solar energies and reduce global temperatures? Could that trigger and iceage? I'm not sure what factors trigger an ice age...

on the bright side, we'll get our glaciers back.

[MGKrebs]

8. This looks like a new study, so there may not be much available

yet to confirm this exact phenomena. But you may want to check out "An Inconvenient Truth" for a lot of related information. There is the movie and a book.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

And regardless of what are the exact processes at work, it is hard to avoid the evidence that something very bad is happening:



There is much more info like this in the movie- data taken over 65,0000 years from ice cores.

[Strelnikov_]

16. "And Regardless Of What Are The Exact Processes"

is really what it comes down to.

We are approaching or are at the CO2 concentration from 55 Million years ago when earth was a tropical planet with no ice caps.

With no ice caps, the oceans (and everything hydraulically connected) are 80 m (260 ft.) higher.

With the oceans 80 m higher, 80% of the worlds current population is displaced.

So, for me, the question becomes whether a negative feedback loop, or other yet unidentified phenomena, will be initiated that mitigates the temperature effects of greenhouse gases (incl. methane) and water vapor.

If not, we better start moving civilization to higher ground.

[Hand]

14. That's been examined...

Some years ago, a well respected climate scientist, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, published some work on the potential effect of increased cloud coverage (albedo) as a check on atmospheric warming. Basically, it's another possible forcing in the very complex global climatic system. He couldn't predict the likely effects--no responsible scientist would at this point--but did raise the increased albedo factor as something else that would need to be studied and taken into account.

Years ago, I had the privilege of working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, and I must say that the scientists I met there were truly extraordinary people--the kind of people who could be lobotomized and still be geniuses!

Anyway, if you Googled Ramanathan, you could probably find quite a bit on the albedo question. :hi:

[Lisa]

19. I was talking with a climatologist friend in the late 1990s ...

He did some cloud simulation work on the Canadian Climate Centre General Circulation Model. At the time, they were looking at cloud-associated feedbacks (both positive and negative). They'd found that what kind of clouds form (high or low level, ice crystals or water droplets) had an impact on whether the net effect would be cooler (due to the reflection of incoming sunlight) or warmer (due to retention of longwave radiation from the earth's surface).

He is possibly the most intelligent person I've ever encountered, and he didn't have a definite answer either way. (And as you say, Hand -- NCAR, GFDL, and other institutions are swarming with people who have even more brainpower than Howard does, who have forgotten more than I'll ever know about earth-ocean-atmosphere interactions, in terms of biogeochemistry, radiative transfer, and fluid dynamics.) From what I've heard, even though a lot more research has been done on this since then, it's raised a lot more questions than answers (the role of condensation nuclei, "black carbon", etc.). The journals "Climatic Change", or "Journal of Climate", might have some updates? (Although the latter is kind of like reading several doctoral dissertations back to back.)

[Hand]

22. Yes. That's the thing about science...

...it raises questions and rarely comes to anything resembling a definitive conclusion--although I do remember a guy at NCAR showing two graphs on antarctic ozone depletion--one showed the concentrations of ozone-depleting substances and the other the amount of stratospheric ozone. They were virtual mirror images of each other. "That I'm willing to call definitive proof," I think he said.

But as your friend demonstrates, the variables involved in any of these atmospheric forcings are enormous and likely only poorly understood. Condensation nuclei are a whole science in themselves, for heaven's sake. I'm sure the journals do have regular updates, but as you observe they're written by and for heavyweight scientists and are no easy gig to comprehend.

Unfortunately, a lot of the best scientists just won't talk to the MSM any more, because their work and their ideas wind up being dreadfully misrepresented. Many, many of the NCAR scientists gave up on it after getting badly burned--it damages their professional reputations when they say something highly equivocal and qualified to the MSM, and the next day see something like "Global warming not a threat, scientist says..."

Best thing I ever heard on the subject came from an underground filmmaker: "Far out? You want far out? Forget art. Science is MUCH more far out than art." :rofl:

[dysfunctional press]

25. the most recent info i saw...

said that if for instance the gulf stream turned "off", europe would get colder, but not ice age cold, and not cold enough to counteract/stop continued glacier loss- although it could slow a bit.

from what i understand, a new ice age being triggered is no longer considered a viable scenario.

[politicat]

26. The Weather Makers

I'm blanking on the author right now, but I'm listening to it in unabridged audio during my commute. This gets talked about. Apparently, there's a point where if we lose X % of the polar ice, we're permanently SOL on a human time scale.

[2DleftofU]

5. Works the same for cooling

I remember reading in the 70s how, as it got colder, more ice would form and reflect more sunlight, resulting in more ice, etc. As I further recall, if nothing was done about global cooling, a new Ice Age would begin in the mid 90s.

[drm604]

9. Do you have a cite for this?

I don't recall that the idea of global cooling ever gained much scientific acceptance. Certainly not the level of acceptance of global warming.

[Igel]

27. I would say to examine copies of

"My Weekly Reader" (or was it just "Weekly Reader") for 1970 and 1971, but I don't happen to have the citation handy. Then again, I was in 6th grade when I read it.

The story terrified me--every snowflake was confirmation, but my father's having to cut the grass on Xmas (this was just outside Baltimore ... you don't cut the grass in Baltimore that late in December) was trivial background noise.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. Gaia

The "Gaia hypothesis" suggests that the ecosystem tends to adjust itself to maintain conditions favorable to life. However, the system's ability to compensate can be overcome. (BTW: I recommend Lovelock's original book on the subject.)

The theory you mention works well to explain ice ages (something must jump start the initial accumulation of ice and snow.) It also works well in reverse. (As ice and snow cover melt, the darker earth or water beneath it is revealed, which absorbs more light, generating more heat, melting more ice etc.)

Our planet has had times of great glaciers, and times of no glaciers. We're used to living in a time of moderate glaciers, and will probably be quite uncomfortable (to say the least) during either of the two extremes.

We've been dismantling many of the Earth's self-regulation mechanisms (rain forests, wetlands etc.) We shouldn't be too surprised if the results are unpleasant.

[krkaufman]

20. "unpleasant"

chuckle. that's putting it mildly. I'm thinking "uninhabitable" or "biological reboot" might also apply.

[hatrack]

13. Got any citations from peer-reviews scientific journals on this?

Just asking . . .

[alfredo]

24. Soot & dust from human activity darkened the snow and ice.

[paparush]

11. Bush**, hater of all science, will embrace this.

[eppur_se_muova]

18. It's getting worser, fasterer.

Every climate study seems to say the same thing ... previous climate studies underestimated the rate of change.