Paleoclimate record indicates 'drastic' climatic changes on Earth

Washington, Dec 9 (ANI): Earth's paleoclimate records have pointed out that Earth might face rapid climatic changes, including considerable rise in sea level among other catastrophes, this century if the global warming is not put to halt, a NASA researcher has revealed.

By looking at how the Earth's climate responded to past natural changes, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen, sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: "What is the dangerous level of global warming?"

Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change.

But Hansen said that warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Based on Hansen's temperature analysis work, the Earth's average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade.

This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry.

In recent research, Hansen and co-author Makiko Sato compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar 'interglacial' epochs - periods when polar ice caps existed but the world was not dominated by glaciers.

In studying cores drilled from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, Hansen found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than 1 degree Celsius warmer than today.

If temperatures were to rise 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, Hansen said.

"The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient,"

"It would be a prescription for disaster," Hansen added. (ANI)