Warming Warning Is a Burning Issue

Global warming could have even more devastating consequences than anybody so far has predicted.  New calculations suggest that if humans go on burning all known fossil fuel reserves at the present rate, global average temperatures could rise by 8°C by 2300, and the Arctic could become 17°C warmer.

Since the worst predictions for the immediate future put global average warming at 4°C by the end of the century, and 195 nations have pledged to try to constrain temperature rise to an average of less than 2°C, the new set of projections by Canadian scientists is a reminder that global action is urgent.

Katarzyna Tokarska, a climatologist at the University of Victoria, and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they looked once again at the long-term relationship between greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and global average temperatures.

Previous studies have confirmed that the link holds – in scientific language, the connection is linear – all the way up to the combustion equivalent of two trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

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