CNN: 'Feedback loops' acting like a "foot on the accelerator of global warming"

[Turborama]

Run time: 01:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX3iSpa-NQs   Posted on YouTube: February 16, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: February 17, 2009 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 968

 
Monday February 16, 2009

PARIS (AFP) — New studies have warned of triggers in the natural environment, including a greenhouse-gas timebomb in Siberia and Canada, that could viciously amplify global warming.

Thawing subarctic tundra could unleash billions of tonnes of gases that have been safely stored in frosty soil, while oceans and forests are becoming less able to suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, according to papers presented this weekend.

Together, these phenomena mean that more heat-trapping gases will enter the atmosphere, which in turn will stoke global warming, thrusting the machinery of climate change into higher gear.

Researchers in Finland and Russia discovered that nitrous oxide is leaking into the air from so-called "peat circle" ecosystems found throughout the tundra, a vast expanse of territory in higher latitudes.

CO2 and methane account for the lion's share of the gases that have driven global temperatures inexorably higher over the last century.

Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is far less plentiful in volume, but 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. It accounts for about six percent of total global warming, mainly due to a shift toward chemical-intensive agriculture.


Continues: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Climate_change_Feedback_triggers_could_amplify_0216.html


As was reported in Time in 06...

FEEDBACK LOOPS

One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.

That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing."

A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years--since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1176980,00.html">Full Article

If you find this topic interesting, check out http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=271149&mesg_id=271149">this fascinating yet disturbing documentary about "global dimming".

[DS1]

1. How inconvenient

[Turborama]

2. BBC: Global warming 'underestimated'

02:11 GMT, Sunday, 15 February 2009

The severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Professor Chris Field, an author of a 2007 landmark report on climate change, said future temperatures "will be beyond anything" predicted. Prof Field said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had underestimated the rate of change. He said warming is likely to cause more environmental damage than forecast.

Speaking at the American Science conference in Chicago, Prof Field said fresh data showed greenhouse gas emissions between 2000 and 2007 increased far more rapidly than expected. "We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," he said. Prof Field said the 2007 report, which predicted temperature rises between 1.1C and 6.4C over the next century, seriously underestimated the scale of the problem.

He said the increases in carbon dioxide have been caused, principally, by the burning of coal for electric power in India and China.

Wildfires

Prof Field said the impact on temperatures is as yet unknown, but warming is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than had been predicted. He says that a warming planet will dry out forests in tropical areas making them much more likely to suffer from wildfires. The rising temperatures could also speed up the melting of the permafrost, vastly increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, Prof Field warns. "Without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought," he said.

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7890988.stm

[Turborama]

3. Washington Post: Scientists - Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates

By Kari Lydersen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 15, 2009

CHICAGO, Feb. 14 -- The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Field, a member of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said emissions from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have largely outpaced the estimates used in the U.N. panel's 2007 reports. The higher emissions are largely the result of the increased burning of coal in developing countries, he said.

Unexpectedly large amounts of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere as the result of "feedback loops" that are speeding up natural processes. Prominent among these, evidence indicates, is a cycle in which higher temperatures are beginning to melt the arctic permafrost, which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, said several scientists on a panel at the meeting.

The permafrost holds 1 trillion tons of carbon, and as much as 10 percent of that could be released this century, Field said. Along with carbon dioxide melting permafrost releases methane, which is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

"It's a vicious cycle of feedback where warming causes the release of carbon from permafrost, which causes more warming, which causes more release from permafrost," Field said.

Continues: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/14/AR2009021401757.html?referrer=digg

[pansypoo53219]

4. my cousin's PHd thesis was about that

it's a vicious cycle once it starts.

[Turborama]

5. What kind of study was your cousin carrying out?

If this means what I think it means, it's getting very serious and I'm surprised no-one's picking up on it, tbh

[sammythecat]

6. Great.

We're alone, bedridden, and have chronic diarrhea.

Stuff like this always reminds me of a quote, I don't know who said it, that says, speaking of humankind, "We have become very clever but not yet wise.". Our technological prowess has increased almost exponentially since the industrial revolution, but, in general, we're just as selfish, short sighted, and stubbornly dumb as we were 300 years ago.

It's a real shame. It seems like we're really going to fuck up the entire planet and I really don't see anything that's going to stop us. There's just too damn many of us for one thing, with many, many, more on the way. Something unprecedented, dramatic, and profoundly unpleasant is bound to happen.

[Turborama]

7. Kick

:kick: