An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020
Abstract The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIM...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z.pdf http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z |
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crspringernat:10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z 2023-05-15T13:11:48+02:00 An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 Randers, Jorgen Goluke, Ulrich 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z.pdf http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z en eng Springer Science and Business Media LLC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 CC-BY Scientific Reports volume 10, issue 1 ISSN 2045-2322 Multidisciplinary journal-article 2020 crspringernat https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z 2022-01-04T10:59:36Z Abstract The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIMO climate model the world is already past a point-of-no-return for global warming. In ESCIMO we observe self-sustained thawing of the permafrost for hundreds of years, even if global society stops all emissions of man-made GHGs immediately. We encourage other model builders to explore our discovery in their (bigger) models, and report on their findings. The thawing (in ESCIMO) is the result of a continuing self-sustained rise in the global temperature. This warming is the combined effect of three physical processes: (1) declining surface albedo (driven by melting of the Arctic ice cover), (2) increasing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere (driven by higher temperatures), and (3) changes in the concentrations of the GHG in the atmosphere (driven by the absorption of CO 2 in biomass and oceans, and emission of carbon (CH 4 and CO 2 ) from thawing permafrost). This self-sustained, in the sense of no further GHG emissions, thawing process (in ESCIMO) is a causally determined, physical process that evolves over time. It starts with the man-made warming up to the 1950s, leading to a rise in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere—further lifting the temperature, causing increasing release of carbon from thawing permafrost, and simultaneously a decline in the surface albedo as the ice and snow covers melts. To stop the self-sustained warming in ESCIMO, enormous amounts of CO 2 have to be extracted from the atmosphere. Article in Journal/Newspaper albedo Arctic Global warming Ice permafrost Springer Nature (via Crossref) Arctic Scientific Reports 10 1 |
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Springer Nature (via Crossref) |
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crspringernat |
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English |
topic |
Multidisciplinary |
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Multidisciplinary Randers, Jorgen Goluke, Ulrich An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
topic_facet |
Multidisciplinary |
description |
Abstract The risk of points-of-no-return, which, once surpassed lock the world into new dynamics, have been discussed for decades. Recently, there have been warnings that some of these tipping points are coming closer and are too dangerous to be disregarded. In this paper we report that in the ESCIMO climate model the world is already past a point-of-no-return for global warming. In ESCIMO we observe self-sustained thawing of the permafrost for hundreds of years, even if global society stops all emissions of man-made GHGs immediately. We encourage other model builders to explore our discovery in their (bigger) models, and report on their findings. The thawing (in ESCIMO) is the result of a continuing self-sustained rise in the global temperature. This warming is the combined effect of three physical processes: (1) declining surface albedo (driven by melting of the Arctic ice cover), (2) increasing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere (driven by higher temperatures), and (3) changes in the concentrations of the GHG in the atmosphere (driven by the absorption of CO 2 in biomass and oceans, and emission of carbon (CH 4 and CO 2 ) from thawing permafrost). This self-sustained, in the sense of no further GHG emissions, thawing process (in ESCIMO) is a causally determined, physical process that evolves over time. It starts with the man-made warming up to the 1950s, leading to a rise in the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere—further lifting the temperature, causing increasing release of carbon from thawing permafrost, and simultaneously a decline in the surface albedo as the ice and snow covers melts. To stop the self-sustained warming in ESCIMO, enormous amounts of CO 2 have to be extracted from the atmosphere. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Randers, Jorgen Goluke, Ulrich |
author_facet |
Randers, Jorgen Goluke, Ulrich |
author_sort |
Randers, Jorgen |
title |
An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
title_short |
An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
title_full |
An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
title_fullStr |
An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
title_full_unstemmed |
An earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made GHG emissions stop in 2020 |
title_sort |
earth system model shows self-sustained thawing of permafrost even if all man-made ghg emissions stop in 2020 |
publisher |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z.pdf http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75481-z |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
albedo Arctic Global warming Ice permafrost |
genre_facet |
albedo Arctic Global warming Ice permafrost |
op_source |
Scientific Reports volume 10, issue 1 ISSN 2045-2322 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75481-z |
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Scientific Reports |
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10 |
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