Study: Climate change irreversible for 1,000 years

The global climate changes wrought by rising carbon dioxide emissions are now too late to stop and will linger for more than 1,000 years, according to a new study by researchers in the US and Europe.

“Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Researchers from Switzerland’s ETH Zurich and France’s Institut Pierre Simon Laplace also participated in the study.

The study modeled several scenarios in which global carbon dioxide levels peak at different concentrations, at which point all future emissions are completely stopped. No matter what level they considered, though, researchers found the results were quantifiable and irreversible impacts on climate.

In the case of carbon dioxide peaking at 450 to 600 parts per million (ppm), compared to today’s level of 385 ppm, several parts of the globe could expect drastic drops in rainfall comparable to the US Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Those regions include southern Europe, northern Africa, southern Africa, southwestern North America and western Australia.

Rising carbon dioxide levels are also “locking in” higher sea levels for centuries to come, the researchers say. Minus even the additional water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, global sea levels would rise at least 2 meters by the year 3000 if carbon dioxide concentrations peak at 1,000 ppm.

The result, the study’s authors write, would be “irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged.”

Depressed yet? We are.