Global Warming

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Global Warming
Throughout its long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate
has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its
orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in
the past century, another force has started to influence Earth’s climate: humanity
How does this warming compare to previous changes in Earth’s climate? How can
we be certain that human-released greenhouse gases are causing the warming? How
much more will the Earth warm? How will Earth respond? Answering these
questions is perhaps the most significant scientific challenge of our time.
What is Global Warming?
Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface
temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released as
people burn fossil fuels. The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9
degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature
increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Temperatures are certain to go up
further.
Earth’s natural greenhouse effect
Earth’s temperature begins with the Sun. Roughly 30 percent of incoming sunlight is
reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the remaining 70
percent, most is absorbed by the land and ocean, and the rest is absorbed by the
atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet.
As the rocks, the air, and the seas warm, they radiate “heat” energy (thermal infrared
radiation). From the surface, this energy travels into the atmosphere where much of it
is absorbed by water vapor and long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide
and methane.
When they absorb the energy radiating from Earth’s surface, microscopic water or
greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters— like the bricks in a fireplace, they
radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that
radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface,
enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
This absorption and radiation of heat by the atmosphere—the natural greenhouse
effect—is beneficial for life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s
average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the
comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today.
See Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget to read more about how sunlight fuels
Earth’s climate.
The enhanced greenhouse effect
What has scientists concerned now is that over the past 250 years, humans have been
artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at an
ever-increasing rate, mostly by burning fossil fuels, but also from cutting down
carbon-absorbing forests. Since the Industrial Revolution began in about
1750, carbon dioxide levels have increased nearly 38 percent as of 2009 and
methane levels have increased 148 percent.
Increases in concentrations of carbon dioxide (top) and methane (bottom) coincided
with the start of the Industrial Revolution in about 1750. Measurements from
Antarctic ice cores (green lines) combined with direct atmospheric measurements
(blue lines) show the increase of both gases over time. (NASA graphs by Robert
Simmon, based on data from the NOAA Paleoclimatology and Earth System
Research Laboratory.)
The atmosphere today contains more greenhouse gas molecules, so more of the
infrared energy emitted by the surface ends up being absorbed by the atmosphere.
Since some of the extra energy from a warmer atmosphere radiates back down to the
surface, Earth’s surface temperature rises. By increasing the concentration of
greenhouse gases, we are making Earth’s atmosphere a more efficient greenhouse.

How Much More Will Earth Warm?

To further explore the causes and effects of global warming and to predict future
warming, scientists build climate models—computer simulations of the climate
system. Climate models are designed to simulate the responses and interactions of the
oceans and atmosphere, and to account for changes to the land surface, both natural
and human-induced. They comply with fundamental laws of physics—conservation
of energy, mass, and momentum—and account for dozens of factors that influence
Earth’s climate.
Though the models are complicated, rigorous tests with real-world data hone them
into powerful tools that allow scientists to explore our understanding of climate in
ways not otherwise possible. By experimenting with the models—removing
greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels or changing the intensity of
the Sun to see how each influences the climate—scientists use the models to better
understand Earth’s current climate and to predict future climate.
The models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas
concentrations will continue to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will rise
with them. Based on a range of plausible emission scenarios, average surface
temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century.
Snow and ice
Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the
Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing
percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight
of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of
snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sunlight-reflecting surfaces that cool
the planet to having dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces that bring more energy into the
Earth system and cause more warming.
Water Vapor
The largest feedback is water vapor. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas. In fact,
because of its abundance in the atmosphere, water vapor causes about two-thirds of
greenhouse warming, a key factor in keeping temperatures in the habitable range on
Earth. But as temperatures warm, more water vapor evaporates from the surface into
the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to climb further.
The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere
in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance
between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the
atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor
concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Will that trend hold as temperatures
continue to warm?
The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how
much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The
atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the
atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water
vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in recent decades. If this trend
continues, and many models say that it will, water vapor has the capacity to double
the warming caused by carbon dioxide alone.
The Carbon Cycle
Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and warming temperatures are
causing changes in the Earth’s natural carbon cycle that also can feedback on
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. For now, primarily ocean water, and to
some extent ecosystems on land, are taking up about half of our fossil fuel and
biomass burning emissions. This behavior slows global warming by decreasing the
rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide increase, but that trend may not continue. Warmer
ocean waters will hold less dissolved carbon, leaving more in the atmosphere.
Extra carbon dioxide can stimulate plant growth in some ecosystems, allowing these
plants to take additional carbon out of the atmosphere. However, this effect may be
reduced when plant growth is limited by water, nitrogen, and temperature. This effect
may also diminish as carbon dioxide increases to levels that become saturating for
photosynthesis. Because of these complications, it is not clear how much additional
carbon dioxide plants can take out of the atmosphere and how long they could
continue to do so.
The impact of climate change on the land carbon cycle is extremely complex, but on
balance, land carbon sinks will become less efficient as plants reach saturation,
where they can no longer take up additional carbon dioxide, and other limitations on
growth occur, and as land starts to add more carbon to the atmosphere from warming
soil, fires, and insect infestations. This will result in a faster increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide and more rapid global warming. In some climate models, carbon
cycle feedbacks from both land and ocean add more than a degree Celsius to global
temperatures by 2100.
Changing Weather
For most places, global warming will result in more frequent hot days and fewer cool
days, with the greatest warming occurring over land. Longer, more intense heat
waves will become more common. Storms, floods, and droughts will generally be
more severe as precipitation patterns change. Hurricanes may increase in intensity
due to warmer ocean surface temperatures.
Apart from driving temperatures up, global warming is likely to cause bigger, more
destructive storms, leading to an overall increase in precipitation. With some
exceptions, the tropics will likely receive less rain (orange) as the planet warms,
while the polar regions will receive more precipitation (green). White areas indicate
that fewer than two-thirds of the climate models agreed on how precipitation will
change. Stippled areas reveal where more than 90 percent of the models agreed.
(©2007 IPCC WG1 AR-4.)
It is impossible to pin any single unusual weather event on global warming, but
emerging evidence suggests that global warming is already influencing the
weather. Heat waves, droughts, and intense rain events have increased in
frequency during the last 50 years, and human-induced global warming more likely
than not contributed to the trend.
Impacting People
The changes to weather and ecosystems will also affect people more directly. Hardest
hit will be those living in low-lying coastal areas, and residents of poorer countries
who do not have the resources to adapt to changes in temperature extremes and water
resources. As tropical temperature zones expand, the reach of some infectious
diseases, such as malaria, will change. More intense rains and hurricanes and rising
sea levels will lead to more severe flooding and potential loss of property and life.
One inevitable consequence of global warming is sea-level rise. In the face of higher
sea levels and more intense storms, coastal communities face greater risk of rapid
beach erosion from destructive storms like the intense nor’easter of April 2007 that
caused this damage. (Photograph ©2007 metimbers2000.)
Hotter summers and more frequent fires will lead to more cases of heat stroke and
deaths, and to higher levels of near-surface ozone and smoke, which would cause
more ‘code red’ air quality days. Intense droughts can lead to an increase in
malnutrition. On a longer time scale, fresh water will become scarcer, especially
during the summer, as mountain glaciers disappear, particularly in Asia and parts of
North America.
On the flip side, there could be “winners” in a few places. For example, as long as the
rise in global average temperature stays below 3 degrees Celsius, some models
predict that global food production could increase because of the longer growing
season at mid- to high-latitudes, provided adequate water resources are available. The
same small change in temperature, however, would reduce food production at lower
latitudes, where many countries already face food shortages. On balance, most
research suggests that the negative impacts of a changing climate far outweigh the
positive impacts. Current civilization—agriculture and population distribution—has
developed based on the current climate. The more the climate changes, and the more
rapidly it changes, the greater the cost of adaptation.
Ultimately, global warming will impact life on Earth in many ways, but the extent of
the change is largely up to us. Scientists have shown that human emissions of
greenhouse gases are pushing global temperatures up, and many aspects of climate
are responding to the warming in the way that scientists predicted they would. This
offers hope. Since people are causing global warming, people can mitigate global
warming, if they act in time. Greenhouse gases are long-lived, so the planet will
continue to warm and changes will continue to happen far into the future, but the
degree to which global warming changes life on Earth depends on our decisions now.