Is Global Warming Happening Faster Than Expected? (preview)

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Loss of ice, melting of permafrost and other climate effects are occurring at an alarming pace

By John Carey

Image: Dan Saelinger

In Brief

• Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees Celsius, perils such as catastrophic sea-level rise could be avoided.
• Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even before the two degree C ?limit? is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide.
• The feedbacks could accelerate warming, alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and spawn more and larger wildfires.

Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm.

Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is changing faster than expected. More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean is disappearing than had been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are spewing out more methane, the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held back on adjacent land are sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave that gripped much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? ?As scientists, we cannot say that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine,? says Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

This article was originally published with the title Global warming: Faster Than Expected?.

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