Earth is heating up, and it’s our
fault.
Warming is already whittling
away at Colorado’s snowpack
vital for both the state’s $2 billion
ski industry and water supply
across the West. Seas could rise
up to 23 inches by 2100, as heat
waves scorch more people and
hurricanes likely get stronger.
That’s what a United Nations report
released last week forecasts.
The report also predicts average
global warming by up to 8 degrees
Fahrenheit if levels of heat trapping
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
double.
During the last Ice Age, the average
global temperature was about 9 degrees cooler.
As bad as the scenarios released
by the U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate
Change are they do not take
into account scientific data
published in the past year. The
2,000-plus contributors needed
to come to consensus and
write.
So it looks as if it will get
even worse.
“Before this, people said
about greenhouse warming,
‘Ah, I won’t see it,'” said Pieter
Tans, a researcher with the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration in Boulder.
“Now, actually, I will have to
deal with it in my lifetime and
it may involve, for example,
the loss of the U.S. southern
coast,” Tans said.
Adding fuel to the fire
In the past 13 months, peer reviewed
papers published in
science journals reported such
findings as:
- Melting permafrost will
probably bubble more greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere,
warming Earth faster. - Sea ice in the Arctic is melting
more quickly than many
predicted, as is Greenland’s ice. - Wildfires are becoming
more common in the United
States, and they can release toxic
mercury into the air. - Oceans are becoming more
acidic as carbon dioxide seeps
in, slowing the growth of corals
and other shell-forming organisms.
“As we move into this warmer
world we’ve created, we’re
starting to see things we’ve never
seen before,” said Gerald
Meehl, a climate scientist with
the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder.
“Earth is already locked into a
hotter future because carbon
dioxide mainly from burning
coal, oil and gas remains
in the atmosphere for a century,”
NCAR scientist Jerry Mahlman
said.
To stabilize the climate,
Mahlman said, we have to reduce
our fossil fuel emission
by about 70, 75 percent.
“This is not a recycle-your-garbage-
on-the-street kind of
thing,” he said.
Last week’s climate assessment
galvanized the attention
of world leaders and the public.
“We scientists sense it has gotten
scarier, and I think the public
is picking up on that,” said
Ralph Keeling, a researcher
with the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.
NCAR’s Meehl was lead author
of a chapter in the IPPC report
that showed that Earth’s
temperature could rise 2 to 12 degrees
Fahrenheit by 2100, depending
on how technology and
energy consumption change
and population increases.
“The longer you wait,”
Meehl said, “the worse the
problems get and the more you
have to do to stop them.”
Rocky forecast
Colorado’s average temperature
could heat up by 7 or 8 degrees
Fahrenheit by the end of
the century, according to a U.N.
climate change report released in
part last week.
“That’s considerable warming,
and it could conceivably be quite
a bit greater than that,” said Linda
Mearns, a climate researcher
with the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder.
It’ll almost certainly get warmer
in the Southwest, Mearns said,
and Colorado’s mountain snowpacks
along with those across
the West will continue to thin.
Spring’s melt season may end
several weeks earlier by 2100, said
Mearns, a co-author of the report.
The Western forecast bodes
poorly for water managers and
those using the mountains for recreation,
she said.
“We’ll be saying ‘The National
Park formally known as Glacier,’
Mearns said.
Climate modeler Tom Delworth
with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration
in Princeton, N.J., agreed.
“Areas that are already wet
get wetter; areas that are already
dry get drier,” Delworth said.
Staff writer Katy Human can
be reached at 303-954-1910 or
khuman@denverpost.com.
