Paleoclimate Study Shows We May Be Underestimating Climate Threat

[hatrack]

Have experts underestimated future global warming? A Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist was part of an international study that suggests just that.

Karen Bice, a paleoclimatologist, worked on a 2003 expedition that took core samples from the ocean bottom off Suriname in northern South America. She was looking for the fossils of one-celled zooplankton that died and sank to the bottom 84 million to 100 million years ago. The animals' shells contain two distinct oxygen isotopes, differentiated by the number of neutrons in their nucleus. The ratio between these two oxygen isotopes changes with temperature.

According to the recently released study results, Bice puts the prehistoric ocean's temperature at 91 to 107 degrees Fahrenheit. The warmest open ocean today is around 84 degrees. ''These temperatures are off the charts from what we've seen before,'' said Bice in a press release. Her research also showed that millions of years ago the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about four times what is now, she said in an interview last week. Many scientists believe high levels of carbon dioxide and other gases that come from burning fossil fuels collect in the atmosphere, wrapping the earth in a blanket of dense air, keeping some reflected sunlight and heat from escaping into space.

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Bice became concerned when the computer models used by scientists to predict increases in global warming could not duplicate sea temperatures as high as she had found. That led her to believe current models are underestimating the future effects of high levels of carbon dioxide and other gases. ''What Karen's study is saying is that if we burn up all the fossil fuels, we may make a really different world, and that the people who are saying it won't be very different are probably wrong,'' said Richard Alley a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University and chairman of the U.S. National Research Council study on Abrupt Climate Change.

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http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/modernperil7.htm

[XemaSab]

1. You really have to wonder

what kind of hurricane strength we could see in a 104 degree Gulf of Mexico.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Your graphic is appropriate

That will a good time for lots of beer.

[XemaSab]

5. I'm sure fermentation will proceed quickly

when the planet is 20 degrees warmer.

[glitch]

2. If the human race survives these temperatures, will it evolve to look like

this:

[tocqueville]

3. life existed in overflow 100 million years ago

it was the kingdom of dinosaurs on a green planet with forests we can't even imagine, feeding giant animals...

humans can survive those temperatures, and there is till plenty of room in the northern latitudes... but life would be different yes...




by the way the period she names matches with extinction of the dinosaurs... What effect had the meteor impact on the global climate ?

[kestrel91316]

7. I think maintaining a comfortable indoor living environment

could become just a tad challenging under these conditions.........

[kestrel91316]

6. I don't think I have underestimated the threat......

I truly think we have screwed the pooch, to put it mildly.