Goddard Global Warming Warning

While NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and National Public Radio debate semantics on whether NASA is doing enough to support climate studies, the agency and Columbia University are about to release more data on global warming, supported by Goddard Space Flight Center spacecraft data.

The data involve the arctic and Antarctic, viewed here from the Galileo spacecraft (Click on picture to enlarge). The lead author of a new report on the issue is James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The institute makes heavy use of data generated by spacecraft under the Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Md. near Washington.

Hansen’s scientific work was earlier at the center of controversy when a Bush administration political appointee in public affairs at NASA Headquarters allegedly changed NASA releases to reinforce administration policy.

The new NASA and Columbia Earth Institute data find that human-made greenhouse gases have brought the Earth's climate close to critical tipping points, with potentially dangerous consequences for the planet, NASA managers say. "If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows that there will be disastrous effects, including increasingly rapid sea level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones," says Hansen.

From a combination of climate models, satellite data, and data from ancient polar ice, scientists conclude that the West Antarctic ice sheet, Arctic ice cover, and regions providing fresh water sources and species habitat are under threat from continued global warming, NASA says.

Hansen’s research appears in the current issue of the scientific journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming. This study finds that global warming of 0.6 deg C in the past 30 years has been driven mainly by increasing greenhouse gases, and only moderate additional climate forcing is likely to set in motion disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice.

Amplifying feedbacks include increased absorption of sunlight as melting exposes darker surfaces and speedup of iceberg discharge as the warming ocean melts ice shelves that otherwise inhibit ice flow. Goddard and other researchers used data on earlier warm periods in Earth's history to estimate climate impacts as a function of global temperature, climate models to simulate global warming, and satellite data to verify ongoing changes.

--Craig Covault

Comments

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[x-ray fluorescence]

NASA's warning that we've had the last chance to affect a change in our runaway destructive global warming is nonsense. We have many more warnings. Let's use them all up and see what happens!

[supra shoes]

If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows that there will be disastrous effects, including increasingly rapid sea level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones

[vibram five fingers]

Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.

[vibram five fingers]

a combination of climate models, satellite data, and data from ancient polar ice, scientists conclude that the West Antarctic ice sheet