Scientists have determined the concentration of carbon dioxide at which the atmosphere of our planet will begin to heat up catastrophically
It was believed that a sharp increase in the average annual temperature - by several degrees at once - would begin when the concentration of greenhouse carbon dioxide reached 2,000 parts per million. Now it is about 5 times lower - just over 400 per million. It is rising, of course, but very slowly - by 2 parts per million per year. At this rate, up to the critical threshold another 800 years.
However, American scientists Ying Cui (Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College) and Brian A. Schubert (School of Geosciences, University of Louisiana) have obtained much more alarming data by analyzing the ratio of carbon isotopes in sediments. It - the ratio - showed that the same critical threshold is two times lower - not 2000 parts per million, but 1000. Carbon dioxide reached this concentration about 50 million years ago, after which the so-called hyperwarming began. That is, the heat was very intense - such that one could swim and sunbathe on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. There would be someone.
It turns out that the thermal catastrophe is much closer than it was commonly believed. It is less than 300 years old. This is according to the most optimistic forecasts. The global warming process can accelerate at any time if others join carbon dioxide - for example, methane from gas hydrates. More information on the findings of scientists can be found in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters in their article entitled Atmospheric pCO2 reconstructed across five early Eocene global warming events.
Hyper-warming may occur much earlier than thought.
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Carbon dioxide concentration is growing at an unprecedented rate
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The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is monitored by the NASA satellite (NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 - OCO-2). From the data he collected, it follows: between 2015 and 2016, 2.5 billion tons of gas got into the atmosphere. There have not been such large-scale emissions in 2000 years. Gas came mainly from tropical regions. And it is to blame for this, as scientists believe, El Niño is a strange natural phenomenon, the essence of which is the heating of a giant strip of water in the Pacific Ocean.
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And we will go to the North
Dutch professor Louise O. Fresco from Wageningen University, speaking at the International Youth Agrarian Summit, said that countries with vast northern regions - for example, Russia and Canada - will only benefit from global warming. Areas of so-called sustainable agriculture will move to the north. And on 6 acres near Moscow, pineapples will begin to ripen.
The professor confirmed the conclusions that experts of the international company The Eco Expert regularly publish. They compose a kind of rating of countries, ranking them according to the expected impact on these countries of the coming climate change. The results are plotted on a map, coloring it depending on how comfortable the residents will be in the process of global warming gaining strength.
The greener the country, the more pleasant it will be to live in it. The "redder", the more unbearable.
Countries that will benefit from global warming are marked with green.
Russia is in the "green zone" and at the top of the rating - it ranks 32nd out of 192. We will survive global warming. Maybe we can cope with the hyper-warming that will come in 300 years.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY