Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions Would Save Arctic Ice, Reduce Sea-Level Rise

While global temperatures would rise, the most dangerous potential consequences of climate change, including massive losses of Arctic sea ice and permafrost and significant sea-level rise, could be partially avoided.

“This research indicates that we can no longer avoid significant warming during this century,” says Warren Washington, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and lead author of the study. “But, if the world were to implement this level of emission cuts, we could stabilize the threat of climate change and avoid catastrophe.”

The study will be published on 21 April in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

Average global temperatures have gone up by close to 1 degree Celsius (almost 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last century. Much of the warming is due to human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide. The heat-trapping gas has increased from a pre- industrial level of about 284 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere to more than 380 ppm today.

With research showing that additional warming of about 1 degree Celsius may be the threshold for dangerous climate change, the European Union has called for dramatic cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The U.S. Congress is also debating the issue.

To examine the impact of such cuts on the world's climate, Washington and his colleagues ran a series of global supercomputer studies with the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model. They assumed that carbon dioxide levels could be held to 450 ppm at the end of the century. That figure comes from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which has cited 450 ppm as an attainable target if the world quickly adapted conservation practices and new green technologies to cut emissions dramatically. In contrast, emissions are now on track to reach about 750 ppm by 2100 if unchecked.

The team's results showed, if carbon dioxide was held to 450 ppm, global temperatures would increase by 0.6 degrees Celsius (about 1 degree Farenheit) above current readings by the end of the century. In contrast, the study showed that temperatures would rise by almost four times that amount, to 2.2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Farenheit) above current readings, if emissions were allowed to continue on their present course.

Holding carbon dioxide levels to 450 ppm would have other implications, according to the climate modeling study:

* Sea-level rise would be 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) instead of 22 centimeters (8.7 inches). This is the amount of rise due to thermal expansion from warmer water temperatures. Significant, additional sea-level rise would be expected in either scenario from melting ice sheets and glaciers.

* Arctic ice in the summertime would shrink by about a quarter in volume and stabilize by 2100, as opposed to shrinking at least three-quarters and continuing to melt. Some research has suggested the summertime ice will disappear altogether this century if emissions continue on their current trajectory.

* Arctic warming would be reduced by almost half, helping preserve fisheries and populations of sea birds and Arctic mammals in such regions as the northern Bering Sea.

* Significant regional changes in precipitation, including decreased precipitation in the U.S. Southwest and an increase in the U.S. Northeast and Canada, would be cut in half if emissions were kept to 450 ppm.

* The climate system would stabilize by about 2100, instead of continuing to warm.

The research team used supercomputer simulations to compare a business-as-usual scenario to one with dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions beginning in about a decade. The authors stressed that they were not studying how such cuts could be achieved nor advocating a particular policy.

“Our goal is to provide policymakers with appropriate research so they can make informed decisions,” Washington says. “This study provides some hope that we can avoid the worst impacts of climate change — if society can cut emissions substantially over the next several decades and continue major cuts through the century.”

This study was funded by the Department of Energy and by the National Science Foundation.