Hothouse Earth | Latest Burning Issue

An international team of climate researchers, writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says the warming expected in the next few decades could turn some of the Earth’s natural forces – that currently protect us – into our enemies.

Researchers believe we could soon cross a threshold leading to boiling hot temperatures and towering seas in the centuries to come.
Even if countries succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, we could still lurch on to this “irreversible pathway”.
Their study shows it could happen if global temperatures rise by 2C.
Each year the Earth’s forests, oceans and land soak up about 4.5 billion tonnes of carbon that would otherwise end up in our atmosphere adding to temperatures.
But as the world experiences warming, these carbon sinks could become sources of carbon and make the problems of climate change significantly worse.

So whether it is the permafrost in northern latitudes that now holds millions of tonnes of warming gases, or the Amazon rainforest, the fear is that the closer we get to 2 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, the greater the chances that these natural allies will spew out more carbon than they currently now take in.
We are the ones in control right now, but once we go past 2 degrees, we see that the Earth system tips over from being a friend to a foe.

- We totally hand over our fate to an Earth system that starts rolling out of equilibrium.
- In their new study the authors looked at 10 natural systems, which they term “feedback processes”.
- Right now, these help humanity to avoid the worst impacts of carbon and temperature rises, and include forests, Arctic sea-ice, and methane hydrates on the ocean floor.
- The worry is that if one of these systems tips over and starts pushing large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the rest could follow like a row of dominoes.

According to the research paper, crossing into a Hothouse Earth period would see a higher global temperature than at any time in the past 1.2 million years.
The climate might stabilise with 4-5 degrees C of warming above the pre-industrial age. Thanks to the melting of ice sheets, the seas could be 10-60 metres higher than now.
Essentially, this would mean that some parts of the Earth would become uninhabitable.
The only upside, if you can call it that, is that the worst impacts may not be felt for a century or two. The downside is that we wouldn’t really be able to do anything about it, once it starts
Climate and other global changes show us that we humans are

impacting the Earth system at the global level. This means that we as a global community can also manage our relationship with the system to influence future planetary conditions.
So not only are we going to have to stop burning fossil fuels by the middle of this century, we are going to have to get very busy with planting trees, protecting forests, working out how to block the Sun’s rays and developing machines to suck carbon out of the air.