Hızlı iklim değişikliği

• “İklim, son 65 milyon yılda olmadığı ölçüde hızlı  değişiyor.” 

Bu açıklama ABD’nin Stanford Üniversitesinin hazırladığı bir raporda
yer alıyor. Yapılan araştırma  Today’s Science dergisinde yayımlandı. Araştırmada görev alan Christopher Field  yaptığı açıklamada  “Küresel ısınım bu yüzyıl içinde 1,5  derece  artacak olursa hız daha önce görülenden 10 kat daha fazla olacak. Ancak sıcaklık artışını bu düzeyde tutmak için bile sera gazları salımında çok büyük azaltma gerekli.” dedi.

Field devamla, 

“Eğer dünya sera gazı emisyonlarını azaltmadan mevcut haliyle kalırsa ve küresel sıcaklık 5 derece artarsa, değişimin ilerleme hızı geçmiştekinden
en az 50, hatta 100 kat daha çok olacak.” diyor. Burada geçmiş olarak tanımlanan süre 55 milyon yıl……  Field “Gezegen 65 milyon yıldır böyle hızlı  bir değişim yaşamadı, İnsanlık böyle bir şeye tanık olmadı.” diyor.….

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

NASA Kuzey Denizi’nin en kalın parçasında çok hızlı erime tepit etti.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

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Today’s Climate Change Proves Much Faster Than Changes
in Past 65 Million Years

The climate is changing at a pace that’s far faster than anything seen in 65 million years, a report out of Stanford University says. The amount of global temperature increase and the short time over which it’s occurred create a change in velocity that outstrips previous periods of warming or cooling, the scientists said in research published in today’s Science.

If global temperatures rise 1,5 degrees Celsius over the next century, the rate will be about 10 times faster than what’s been seen before, saidChristopher Field, one of the scientists on the study. Keeping the temperature increase that small will require aggressive mitigation, he said.

If the Earth stays on its current course without reversing greenhouse gas emissions, and global temperatures rise 5 degrees Celsius, as scientists say is possible, the pace of change will be at least 50 times and possibly 100 times swifter than what’s occurred in the past, Field said. The numbers are imprecise because the comparison is to an era 55 million years ago, he said.

“The planet has not experienced changes this rapid in 65 million years,” Field said. “Humans have never seen anything like this” Field, in the school’s Department of Global Ecology with the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science, reviewed and synthesized existing research on climate change for a special issue of Science: “Natural Systems in Changing Climates.”

They looked at climate events or major transitions that have happened on Earth since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Those include the period when the Earth emerged from an ice age. Temperatures then increased between 3 and 5 degrees Celsius, similar to the amount scientists say is possible with ongoing climate change. But that change happened over about 20 thousand  years, the scientists said, and not decades as is happening now.

They also looked at a period when global temperatures dropped 11 to 12 degrees over a period 52 million to 34 million years ago.

“That’s a larger change in global temperature than what’s likely to occur over the next century, but it happened over 18 million years,”  Diffenbaugh said. “So it was a high-magnitude but relatively low-rate event. “We find periods of Earth’s history where the global temperature change was of similar magnitude, but the rate was an order of magnitude slower.”

Ecosystems shifting a yard a day
The changes that are expected ahead will happen much faster than the rate at which species and ecosystems typically are able to adjust, Field said.Plants  and animals essentially would need to move about 1 yard each day farther north or higher in elevation to maintain the conditions they prefer, Field said. While farmers and others can shift where they grow crops, Field said, it’s different for a butterfly or a maple tree. “Maple trees are not good at moving,” Field said, adding, “You don’t have forests moving over long distances very, very fast.”

Trees can shift over time when seeds are blown and squirrels carry acorns, but it typically is not that rapid, he said. The fastest that trees have had to move in the past was tens of meters per year. That’s known from pollen records, he said. “We actually don’t have any good examples of them moving as fast as they’ll need to in the future because the climate zones haven’t moved that fast” Field said.

At the same time, species and plants will be affected by other human-induced changes, the paper said.

“In responding to those rapid changes in climate, organisms will encounter a highly fragmented landscape that is dominated by a broad range of human influences,” the study said. “The combination of high climate-change velocity and multidimensional human fragmentation will present terrestrial ecosystems with an environment that is unprecedented in recent evolutionary history.”