Global warming has accelerated, we are in the early stages of a climate emergency – scientists
The Earth is warming much faster than scientists previously predicted. This means that the key threshold of global warming may be exceeded already this decade.
This is evidenced by a study published in the Oxford Open Climate Change journal. Its co-author is the American scientist James Hansen – a scientist who, back in the 1980s, was the first to draw the world’s attention to the greenhouse effect, writes The Guardian.
In their study, the scientists used a combination of paleoclimatic information (polar ice cores (samples of a substance in the form of a cylindrical column, which is taken during drilling – ed.) and tree rings), climate models and observational data.
They concluded that massive global warming is “looming” due to continued burning of fossil fuels, and the Earth is much more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.
| Photo: dmbaker/Depositphotos |
According to the study, the temperature on the planet will increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the decade, and by two more by 2050.
“We are in the early stages of a climate emergency,” – the report says.
This alarming acceleration of global warming threatens to make the world “less humanly tolerable, with more climate extremes.”
The effect of accelerated global warming could already be seen this year: temperature records were broken in many European countries.
Hansen points to an imbalance between energy coming from the Sun and energy leaving the Earth. It has “significantly increased” and almost doubled over the last decade, the scientist assures.
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| Photo 1: VadimVasenin/Depositphotos |
Hansen warns that such growth could lead to catastrophic sea-level rise for the world’s coastal cities.
To tackle this crisis, scientists are calling for a global carbon tax, increased use of nuclear power to complement renewable energy sources, and increased aid to developing countries in their transition to low-carbon energy.
Hansen also convinces that it is necessary to resort to the artificial lowering of the temperature on the planet by the methods of the so-called solar geoengineering: to spray sulfur particles in the Earth’s atmosphere, which will reflect part of the sunlight back into space.
However, researchers consider this method very controversial: all known methods of solar geoengineering solve the problem of climate change only partially, since they do not affect their catalyst – greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Read also: The mountains of Nepal have lost a third of their ice due to warming – UN Secretary General
Iryna Batiuk, UP. Life
