FILE – The photo in the January 10, 2009 file shows a flock of geese flying past a smoke at the Jeffery Energy Center near Emmitt, Kan. A new study states that the amount of global warming already baked in the air due to past carbon pollution is enough to exceed internationally agreed climate limits. A study conducted on Monday, January 4, 2021, takes a different look at what is called employed heating that comes from gases that capture heat that remain in the atmosphere for more than a century. (Photo AP / Charlie Riedel, file)
FILE – The photo in the January 10, 2009 file shows a flock of geese flying past a smoke at the Jeffery Energy Center near Emmitt, Kan. A new study states that the amount of global warming already baked in the air due to past carbon pollution is enough to exceed internationally agreed climate limits. A study conducted on Monday, January 4, 2021, takes a different look at what is called employed heating that comes from gases that capture heat that remain in the atmosphere for more than a century. (Photo AP / Charlie Riedel, file)
According to a new study, the amount of global warming that comes from carbon pollution already in the air is enough to blow the internationally agreed targets for limiting climate change.
But the game is not over, because although the amount of heating may be inevitable, it may be delayed for centuries if the world quickly stops emitting additional greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil and natural gas, say the study’s authors.
For decades, scientists have been talking about so-called “heater” or rising temperatures based on previous carbon emissions that have remained in the atmosphere for more than a century. It is like the distance traveled by a car that exceeds speed after the brakes are applied.
But Monday’s study in the journal Nature Climate Change calculates that a little differently and now calculates that already polluted carbon pollution will push global temperatures to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of prehistoric heating.
Previous estimates, including those accepted by international scientific groups, were about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) lower than the amount of heating used.
International climate agreements set targets to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since the pre-industrial period, with the more ambitious goal of limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) added to Paris in 2015 The world has already warmed to about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).
“You have something … global warming inertia that will keep the climate system warmer, and that’s basically what we’re calculating,” said co-author Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Think of the climate system as the Titanic. It’s hard to turn the ship around when you see the icebergs. “
Dessler and colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Nanjing University in China have calculated the warming employed to take into account that the world has warmed at a different rate in different places and that places that have not warmed as quickly are destined to catch up.
Places like the Southern Ocean, the surroundings of Antarctica are a little colder and this difference creates low clouds that reflect more sun away from the earth, keeping these places cooler. But this situation cannot continue indefinitely, because physics dictates that colder locations will heat up more, and when they do, clouds will drop and more warming will occur, Dessler said.
Previous studies have relied on colder places that remain so, but Dessler and her colleagues say it’s not likely.
External experts said the paper is based on convincing reasoning, but they want more research to prove it is true. Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, said the new paper is better suited to climate models than observational data.
Just because the world is forced to get more warming than international goals, that doesn’t mean everything is lost in the fight against global warming, Dessler said., who warned against what he called “climate convicts”.
If the world soon reaches zero net carbon emissions, 2 degrees of global warming could be delayed enough so that it does not happen for centuries, giving society time to adapt or even come up with technological solutions, he said.
“If we don’t, we will go through (climate goals) in a few decades,” Dessler said. “It simply came to our notice then that climate change was so devastating. If we got a few degrees over 100,000 years, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. We can take care of that. But a few degrees over 100 years is very bad. “
___
Read stories about climate issues from The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.
___
The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.