Fresh warning bells on climate change

Climate science research continues to trigger the alarm. The latest from Scientific Reports, a Nature journal, says that global warming is now an unstoppable process. The model generated by two scientists forecasts that the Earth’s temperature will rise unabated and so would ocean levels even if the whole world stopped greenhouse gas emission right now. 

The climate model, devised by Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke, has been the subject of controversy in the scientific fraternity. According to the duo’s earth system climate interpretable model, the planet has witnessed several tipping points and the process of climate change is now irreversible.

It took into account the melting of Arctic ice for hundreds of years, the thawing process of permafrost as well as increased release of water vapour captured eventually in warmer atmosphere. “We have identified a point-of-no-return in our climate model ESCIMO—and that it is already behind us,” the research paper says. The model has been run from 1850 and shows that global temperatures will eventually rise till 2500 and possibly well beyond it, no matter how much GHG emissions are cut by humanity.

The two scenarios presented in the model look at a ‘dark’ future for the blue planet. “As temperature rises, ice and snow are melted, making the planet darker,” says the paper, which forecasts significant changes in the global climate system. The ESCIMO model has found its fair share of critics who call it contradictory to the more established and evaluated ones.

But the world can only ignore such alarms at its own peril because nations are nowhere near the climate goals set by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In terms of impact, one merely needs to look at Australia bearing the brunt while one of its own studies says that the worst is yet to come.

A recent study from a Japan university says that hurricanes are getting stronger after landfall, causing more destruction because of climate change impacts. Developing and poor nations are paying the bigger human cost of global warming. Under such scenarios, no alarm bell seems alarmist enough.