• 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
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance June 29, 2022
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
Next
Prev
Home Climate News Network

Arctic thaw imperils climate goals

September 26, 2018
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

Melting permafrost lets this Alaskan lake drain away to the sea. Image: US National Park Service (public domain)

Melting permafrost lets this Alaskan lake drain away to the sea. Image: US National Park Service (public domain)

 

Promises to slow climate change have yet to be implemented. And even if they are, they may not be enough, because of the Arctic thaw.

LONDON, 26 September, 2018 – Austrian researchers have bad news for those nations alarmed about climate change: the Arctic thaw means the chances that the world will exceed the global warming limit set by international agreement are high – and getting ever higher with every tiny shift in the planetary thermometer.

Warming in the Arctic is the fastest on the planet – and any warming will release ever more methane and other forms of stored carbon from the thawing permafrost.

Methane is a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. And as it seeps into the atmosphere, the chances that the world will overshoot its promise to contain planetary warming to “well below” 2°C increase.

This target was agreed by 195 nations at a summit in Paris in 2015. The promise implicit in this historic decision was that the world would by 2100 be no hotter than 1.5°C above historic levels.

Global average temperatures have already risen by about 1°C in the last century, thanks to unconstrained combustion of fossil fuels that deposit ancient stored carbon back into the atmosphere in the form of ever more carbon dioxide.

“Getting back to lower levels after an overshoot will be extremely difficult … we may never get back to safer levels of warming”

But, says an international team led by Thomas Gasser of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, there are prodigious amounts of carbon stored in the world’s once permanently frozen soils. As these are released, the chances are that global warming will accelerate.

“Permafrost carbon release from previously frozen organic matter is caused by global warming, and will certainly diminish the budget of CO2 we can emit while staying below a certain level of global warming,” Dr Gasser said.

“It is also an irreversible process over the course of a few centuries, and may therefore be considered a ‘tipping’ element of the Earth’s carbon-climate system that puts the linear approximation of the emission budget framework to the test.”

The message behind the formal language of a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience is simple: the world has less time to act than the presidents and prime ministers who signed the Paris Declaration may think.

But this is no surprise. Right from the start, leading climate scientists were warning that the planet could already be much nearer its optimum target than anybody suspected.

Other researchers have repeatedly stressed the need for urgency, and the inadequacy of any of the prepared responses.

Feedback concern

Concern about the permafrost, too, is not new: polar researchers have been arguing for years that any thaw will increase the atmospheric carbon burden, which will in turn accelerate further warning, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

It is one thing to slow the rate of global warming by drastically reducing fossil fuel emissions and restoring the world’s forests so as to arrive at a limit; quite another thing to overshoot the limit and then try to reduce the planetary temperature, the latest study suggests. There is no simple correlation between burning coal or oil and the planetary temperatures that follow.

“Overshooting is a risky strategy and getting back to lower levels after an overshoot will be extremely difficult. However, since we are officially on an overshooting trajectory, we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we may never get back to safer levels of warming,” Dr Gasser said.

“Policymakers should understand that there is no elementary proportionality between cumulative CO2 emissions due to human activity and global temperature, as previously believed, and that overshooting may have serious consequences.” – 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
76
Ars Electronica/flickr
Solar

Unique ‘Smartflower’ Microgrid to Power Saskatchewan High School

June 13, 2022
154
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
206

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

François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

June 29, 2022
227
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

June 29, 2022
422
Danielle Scott/flickr

Advocate Urges Ottawa to Intervene Before Ontario Builds Highway 413

June 29, 2022
130
David/flickr

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

June 26, 2022
1.2k
Number 10/flickr

G7 Miss ‘Golden Opportunity’, Walk Back Pledge to Cut International Fossil Finance

June 29, 2022
152
London Eye UK England

London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 29, 2022
131

Recent Posts

AJEL / Pixabay

Windfall Tax on Food, Fossil, Pharma Giants Would Raise $490B to Solve ‘Catastrophic’ Food Crisis: Oxfam

June 29, 2022
58
futureatlas.com/flickr

Ottawa Demands Deeper Fuel Emissions Cuts, Offers Fossils a Double-Dip on Tax Breaks

June 29, 2022
78
Province of B.C./flickr

Comox Joins Municipalities Seeking Ban on New Gas Stations

June 29, 2022
78
/Piqsels

Refocus Agriculture Spending to Cut Emissions, Boost Productivity, OECD Urges Governments

June 29, 2022
29
Jimmy Emerson, DVM/flickr

Public Vigilance Key to Protecting Greenbelts for Climate Resilience, Report Finds

June 29, 2022
36
Miguel V/Wikimedia Commons

Forests Fall Short of Full Carbon Storage Potential, Study Finds

June 29, 2022
64
Next Post
Reclaimed British marshland now used for intensive arable crops. Image: By Alan Murray-Rust/Bunny Moor

High-yield farms may save the world

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}