A team of scientists is warning that the effects of global warming might hit us much faster and with a bigger impact than we originally thought. Their claims stem from findings in their recent study, which point to numerous dangers including rising sea levels that could submerge coastal cities, the strongest storms in the Earth's history and a large-scale melting of polar ice sheets.
Of the 19 authors of the study, James Hansen, a climatologist, is considered to be one of the first people to raise awareness of climate change way back in a 1988 congressional testimony. Although many doubted his claims, the years that followed supported them and revealed that the Earth was experiencing a rapid global warming during the time he testified.
Although 194 countries agreed to a climate change deal in December in order to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, this effort may be too little, too late. The study says that if there are no significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions across the world soon, we will experience a global sea level rise of about "several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years," which could prompt coastal city flooding worldwide.
In addition to floods, the researchers claim that the temperature gaps between the tropics and the poles will stimulate powerful storms, pointing to the immense storms that occurred 120,000 years ago during a previous warm period. They even suggest that these storms may have thrown giant boulders onto coastal ridges in the Bahamas, despite other experts pointing to tsunamis as the cause.
The timeline of coming events proposed by the study conflicts with those proposed by other climatologists, leaving some wary about the validity of the predictions.
"Some of the claims in this paper are indeed extraordinary," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. "They conflict with the mainstream understanding of climate change to the point where the standard of proof is quite high," although he adds that Hanson's activity in the field means we should heed his warning regardless of our beliefs.
"I think we ignore James Hansen at our peril," Mann said.
The findings were published in the March 22 issue of Atmospheric and Chemistry Physics.
