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Warmest for 12000 years

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 5 months ago

Earth's Temperature At Highest Level In 12,000 Years

 

Climate may soon be as warm as it was 1 million years ago

 

Bette Hileman

 

Earth's temperature has climbed to a level not seen for 12,000 years,

warns a new study published online in Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0606291103).

 

The research, led by James E. Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard

Institute for Space Studies, finds that the mean surface temperature

of the planet has been warming at a rate of 0.2 ¬ƒC per decade for

the past 30 years. The global mean temperature is now within 1 degree

C of the maximum for the past million years, the study concludes.

 

"This evidence implies that we are getting close to dangerous levels

of human-made pollution," Hansen says. If additional warming is kept

lower than 1 degree C, "the effects of global warming may be

relatively manageable. But if further warming reaches 2 to 3 degrees

C, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than

the one we know." The last time Earth was this warm was about 3

million years ago when sea level was about 25 meters higher than

today, he explains. If CO2 emissions are not curbed, global

temperatures are likely to rise 2 to 3 degrees C by 2100, he warns.

 

Hansen collaborated with David W. Lea and Martin Medina-Elizade of

the University of California, Santa Barbara, to compare recent

temperatures with temperatures derived from sea sediments deposited

over the past million years.

 

The study explains that global warming is already affecting species.

Research has found that 1,700 plant and animal species are moving

toward the North or South Poles at a rate of 6 km per decade, but

over the past 30 years, climate zones have been moving poleward at a

rate of 40 km per decade, Hansen says.

 

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

Copyright © 2006 American Chemical Society

 

 

Posted on Yahoo Group ClimateChange

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