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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (22965)	6/18/1998 8:07:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Further evidence found of global warming Thursday, April 23, 1998 Three years in the decade of the 90s have been found to be warmest on record of all years dating back to 1400 A.D. This finding bolsters the argument that the Earth is warming at least in part due to human emissions of so-called greenhouse gasses, according to a study published in current issue of the journal Nature. Climatologists at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst, working on a National Science Foundation-funded study, have reconstructed global temperature over the past 600 years and determined that 1997, 1995 and 1990 were the warmest. "This study adds solid information to the growing base of data which points to the warming of our planet by human-related activities," says Herman Zimmerman, program director in NSF's division of atmospheric sciences. "The balance of evidence now firmly supports an important human influence on the global climate system. This is a serious problem for people everywhere, and it needs to be addressed at all levels of government." The researchers, who were able to estimate temperatures over more than half the surface of the globe, pinpointing northern hemisphere yearly temperatures to a fraction of a degree back to 1400 A.D., focused on factors that have a significant influence on the climate but are not a part of the climate system itself. Based on statistical comparisons of reconstructed northern hemisphere temperatures, the best estimates indicate that natural changes in the brightness of the sun and volcanic emissions both played an important role in governing climate variations over the period studied. However, over the past few decades, greenhouse gases produced by human activities appear to have had an increasing influence on temperatures. "The anomalous warmth of several recent years appears likely to be related to human influences on climate," said researcher Michael Mann from U. Mass. The study bears out concerns voiced by scientists in recent years regarding global warming, researcher Raymond Bradley, also of U. Mass, said. Scientists have shown that over the last century carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased by 25 percent as a direct result of industrialization. Scientists predict that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were to continue to increase at its current rate, it could rise to double its pre-industrial level during the next century, leading to a magnification of the already observed warming. For example, melting ice caps could raise sea levels, threatening coastal regions with more frequent flooding. The planet as a whole might expect to see frequent extreme weather events, Mann said. "Heat waves and droughts could become more common, and more intense." However, the climatologists expressed concern about the degrees of uncertainty surrounding increased or accelerated global warming. "We have a sense of what might happen to the planet as a whole, but the fact is, we don't really know what the regional impacts might be," said Mann. enn.com