As the USA simmers through its hottest March on record — with more
than 6,000 record high temperatures already set this month — a new study
released Sunday shows that average global temperatures could climb 2.5
to 5.4 degrees by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
The
study findings are based on the results of 10,000 computer model
simulations of future weather overseen by researchers at Oxford
University in the United Kingdom.
"These are the first results to
suggest that the higher warming scenario could be plausible," says study
lead author Dan Rowlands of Oxford.
It is a faster rate of warming than most other models predict.
Most
scientists say that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal
are causing the planet to warm to levels that cannot be explained by
natural variability.
The study was published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience and backs up similar predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.
According
to Rowlands, the climate model was the most complex used to date, and
addresses some of the uncertainties that previous forecasts, using
simpler models, may have overlooked.
"It's only by running such a
large number of simulations — with model versions deliberately chosen to
display a range of behavior — that you can get a handle on the
uncertainty present in a complex system such as our climate," says
Rowlands.
The climate models used in the study accurately
reproduced actual, observed temperature changes over the last 50 years:
Assuming that models that simulate past warming realistically are the
best candidates for future warming predictions, the authors conclude in
the study that a warming of from 2.5 to 5.4 degrees by 2050, compared
with the 1960-90 average, is in the "likely range" of climate warming.
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