Publication Date:
2005-04-30
Description:
Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 +/- 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years. Implications include (i) the expectation of additional global warming of about 0.6 degrees C without further change of atmospheric composition; (ii) the confirmation of the climate system's lag in responding to forcings, implying the need for anticipatory actions to avoid any specified level of climate change; and (iii) the likelihood of acceleration of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hansen, James -- Nazarenko, Larissa -- Ruedy, Reto -- Sato, Makiko -- Willis, Josh -- Del Genio, Anthony -- Koch, Dorothy -- Lacis, Andrew -- Lo, Ken -- Menon, Surabi -- Novakov, Tica -- Perlwitz, Judith -- Russell, Gary -- Schmidt, Gavin A -- Tausnev, Nicholas -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Jun 3;308(5727):1431-5. Epub 2005 Apr 28.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. jhansen@giss.nasa.gov〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15860591" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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