GREENHOUSE GASES COULD RAISE TEMPERATURES 19.8 DEGREES
GREENHOUSE GASES COULD RAISE TEMPERATURES 19.8 DEGREES
GREENHOUSE GASES COULD RAISE TEMPERATURES 19.8 DEGREES
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - Greenhouse gas emissions could cause global temperatures to rise by up to 19.8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to first results from the world's largest climate modeling experiment.
The top end of the predictions, which range from 3.6 F-19.8 F, is double estimates produced so far and could make the world dramatically different in the future.
"Our experiment shows that increased levels of greenhouse gases could have a much greater impact on climate than previously thought," said David Stainforth, the project's chief scientist, from Oxford University.
Without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists estimate the Earth's temperature and sea level will rise, leading to increased flooding and drastic climate changes.
The temperature range predicted is based on assumptions of carbon dioxide levels double those found before the Industrial Revolution. Scientists estimate these levels will be reached by the middle of this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced.
"This is really just the beginning of the process to try and understand the uncertainty and predictions of climate change," Stainforth added. "... it is entirely possible that even current levels of greenhouse gases, if stable and maintained for a long period of time, could lead to dangerous climate change," Stainforth told reporters.
The Kyoto protocol, the main U.N. scheme to reduce greenhouse gases, aims to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
"The danger zone is not something we are going to reach in the middle of this century. We are in it now," said Dr Myles Allen of the Met Office.
PROCESSING POWER climateprediction.net
From Uruguay to Uzbekistan and Sierra Leone to Singapore, 95,000 people from 150 countries are taking part in the climateprediction.net experiment to explore the possible impact of global warming.
By downloading free software from www.climateprediction.net on their personal computers, participants run their own unique version of Britain's Met Office climate model.
While their computer is idle, the program runs a climate simulation over days or weeks and automatically reports the results to Oxford University and other collaborating institutions around the world.
Together, the volunteers have simulated more than 4 million model years, donated 8,000 years of computer time and exceeded the processing power of the world's largest supercomputers. The first results of the continuing experiment are reported in the latest edition of the science journal Nature.
Climateprediction.net was conceived more than five years ago and launched in 2003. It is funded by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council.
Join the climateprediction.net experiment!
What is climateprediction.net?
Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.
Why?
Climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else. There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will probably warm over the coming century; climateprediction.net should, for the first time, tell us what is most likely to happen.
What do we want you to do?
You can download a climate model from this website. It will run automatically as a background process on your computer whenever you switch your computer on. It should not affect any other tasks you use your computer for. As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns on your, unique, version of the world evolve. The results are sent back to us via the internet, and you will be able to see a summary of your results on this web site.
About the climateprediction.net project
The aim of climateprediction.net is to investigate the approximations that have to be made in state-of-the-art climate models (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 as a high priority. Hopefully, the experiment will give decision makers a better scientific basis for addressing one of the biggest potential global problems of the 21st century. The results from climateprediction.net experiment will be fed into the work of the Quantifying Uncertainty in Model Predictions (QUMP) team at the Met Office and will form part of the UK contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.
To help make participation in climateprediction.net more rewarding and fun, we are developing educational resources to help participants learn more about what their model is telling them. These include materials for schools, an Open University short course, and a lively, interactive web-based community where participants can compare discuss, analyse and learn about their model runs.
The climateprediction.net experiment is funded jointly by the NERC and DTI e-Science programs.
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