• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use June 26, 2022
BREAKING: UN Nature Summit, the ‘Paris Conference for Biodiversity’, Moves to Montreal in December June 19, 2022
‘LET’S SUE BIG OIL’: Legal Team Launches Class Action Campaign for B.C. Municipalities June 17, 2022
‘It Could Have Been Any of Us’, Colleague Says, After Brazil Confirms Murders of Bruno Pereira, Dom Phillips June 17, 2022
Infrastructure Gap a ‘Life and Death’ Matter as Northern Canada Warms June 17, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

Scientists post extreme weather warning

December 6, 2015
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

Trying to cool off during a heatwave in London. Image: Chris JL via Flickr

Trying to cool off during a heatwave in London. Image: Chris JL via Flickr

 

COP21: Climate change means that temperate Europe faces the twin threat of life-threatening heatwaves and periods of bitter cold over the next 20 years.

PARIS, 6 December, 2015 – New research warns that longer, hotter and more frequent heatwaves than those that killed 55,000 Russians in 2010, or 72,000 in France, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and the UK in 2003, will hit Europe in the next two decades.

But, over the same period, Europe could also begin to get colder as a consequence of a drop in solar activity, and a century-long chill could be on the way, according to a study of long-period climate cycles.

And if global warming accelerates, and average global ocean temperatures rise by 6°C or more, most of the living, breathing world could in any case begin to suffocate, according to ominous calculations by a mathematician. At some point, the providers of oxygen could begin to perish.

All three uncomfortable projections were published as 30,000 delegates, politicians, observers, pressure groups, and journalists gathered in Paris for COP21, the UN summit on climate change, which is meeting to try to forge an agreement that could, ultimately, limit global warming to a planetary average of 2°C or less.

Magnitude index

Simone Russo, a geophysicist, and colleagues from the European Union Joint Research Centre at Ispra in Italy report in Environmental Research Letters that they developed a heatwave magnitude index to cope with a problem once considered improbable for temperate Europe − extremes of heat.

The index is a tool for statistical analysis, and provides a way of matching bygone events with possible future extremes. Deaths in Europe accounted for 90% of global mortality from heat extremes in the last 20 years. And there could be more on the way.

“Even if global mean temperatures don’t increase too much, we’ll see more extreme events,” Dr Russo says. “These will be hotter, longer and more frequent.”

Scientists from universities in Northumbria, Hull and Bradford in the UK, and from Lomonosov State University in Moscow, are not so sure. Their study in Scientific Reports journal examines the rhythms of the sun, and foresees a possible minimum in solar magnetic activity, which has in the past been linked to extended cold periods in the Earth’s climate history.

The latest research tries to reconstruct climate from 1200 AD and make a forecast until the year 3200, based ultimately on the count of sunspots. And the scientists think a new low is about to begin.

“The depletion of atmospheric oxygen on a global scale is another possible catastrophic consequence of global warming”

“Studies have shown that, over the last 400,000 years, there were five global warming and four ice ages,” says Elena Popova, a physicist at Lomonosov Moscow State University. “What caused them? How much can solar activity affect the weather and climate change? This question is still not solved and is an extremely relevant and interesting challenge for the various researchers around the world.”

Not everyone sees a clear link between sunspot numbers and periodic swings in global temperature. But there isn’t much argument about the importance of plants in the generation of the oxygen for the rest of creation − and an estimated two-thirds of this comes from phytoplankton in the oceans, which cover 70% of the globe.

Ocean productivity

“The rate of oxygen production depends on water temperature and hence can be affected by the global warming,”, say Sergei Petrovskii, professor of applied mathematics, and colleagues at the University of Leicester, UK, in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.

The scientists made a mathematical model of the processes that control ocean productivity, and then added higher levels of warming. Were ocean temperatures to rise by an average of 6°C by 2100, the increase would start to disrupt the process of photosynthesis.

Right now, this is a less than likely outcome: 184 of the 190 nations now engaged in the COP21 summit have submitted pledges to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that generate greenhouse gases and drive global warming, and the latest forecast is that, were all these pledges honoured, global warming could perhaps be contained to within 3°C.

If these were improved upon – and that, too, is the ambition behind the climate summit – then the warming could be limited to 2°C. But the predictions of the Leicester team are a reminder of the high price of failure.

They warn: “Our results indicate that the depletion of atmospheric oxygen on a global scale (which, if it happens, obviously can kill most of the life on Earth) is another possible catastrophic consequence of global warming, a global ecological disaster that has been overlooked.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

stux / Pixabay
Air & Marine

Big Seven European Airlines Lag on Reducing Sky-High Emissions: Report

June 13, 2022
71
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
150
http://midwestenergynews.com/2013/10/24/as-pipeline-concerns-mount-a-renewed-focus-on-the-great-lakes-enbridge-mackinac-line-5/
Pipelines / Rail Transport

Line 5 Closure Brings Negligible Rise in Gas Prices, Enbridge Consultant Finds

June 10, 2022
203

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

The federal government's Cliff Street Power Plant is at the centre of Ottawa's plans to reduce natural gas demand. Photo: PWGSC

EXCLUSIVE: Ontario Regulator Refuses New Pipeline, Tells Enbridge to Plan for Lower Gas Demand

May 30, 2022
5.2k
Jason Woodhead/Flickr

Trans Mountain Pipeline On Track to Lose $600 Million, Parliamentary Budget Officer Finds

June 24, 2022
341
Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay

Plastics Cited as ‘Fossil Industry’s Plan B’ as Guilbeault Announces Partial Ban

June 24, 2022
219
Bruce Reeve/Flickr

Opinion: Ontario’s New ‘Carbon Tax’ Looks Like the One Doug Ford Fought

June 7, 2022
1.6k
eloialferez66/pixnio

Toronto’s New Backyard Homes Will Help Fight Sprawl

June 24, 2022
70
Greg Goebel/Wikimedia Commons

Canadian Pension Board Invests $141M in Chinese Coal Projects, Undercutting Federal Phaseout Policy

July 29, 2020
2.3k

Recent Posts

David/flickr

U.S. Supreme Court Expected to Gut Emission Controls as Climate Scientists Petition for Plan B

June 26, 2022
1
pxhere

Environmental Racism Bill Passes Second Reading in House of Commons

June 26, 2022
1
Graco/Facebook

Soaring Fertilizer Prices Could Deliver ‘Silver Lining’ For Emissions, But Farmers Struggle to Limit Use

June 26, 2022
2
stockvault

Animal Agriculture Could Reduce Future Pandemic Risk, UK Researchers Say

June 26, 2022
1
Gustavo Petro Urrego/flickr

Colombia’s President-Elect Has ‘Ambitious’ Plans to Halt Amazon Deforestation

June 26, 2022
1
Adam E. Moreira/wikimedia commons

Suspend Transit Fares, Not Gas Tax, Climate Advocates Urge Biden

June 26, 2022
1
Next Post
skeeze/Pixabay

Fossils Only Produce 7% of Alberta Employment, and Other Sectors Are Hiring

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}