Temperature and Carbon Dioxide

In the year 2010 and in the beginning of 2011, tragedies happened now and then. Terrible earthquakes, damaging tsunamis and abnormal weather were more frequent than ever since. People guess that the bad temper of the Earth is due to the out-of-control carbon dioxide. Now scientists are trying to discover more secrets about this killer of weather.

Our Earth is becoming more and more sensitive. Scientific studies have indicated that when the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, the temperature of the Earth increases by 1 . In other words, the temperature will raise one degree when the carbon dioxide increases from 280ppm to 560ppm and the temperature will be two degrees higher if the carbon dioxide increases to 1120ppm. But in reality, everything changes when the temperature grows high. For example, there will be more vapors, making the temperature much higher. And the global warming leads to the diminishing ice, which in return worsens the situation. The IPCC estimates that by the year 2100, the temperature will have increased by 2  to 4.5 , while the sea level will have risen by half a meter to 1.4 meters.

Unfortunately, these statistics may be misleading to some extent. There must be some uncertainty of the climate. Moreover, the present climate model neglects the influence of global warming in the long run. Some affects such as the diminishing area of glacier could not be noticed until some decades or a hundred years later. As a result, the climate or the Earth is much more sensitive than it is predicted. The only way that we can know about the sensitivity of the Earth is to study the changes which carbon dioxide has brought us in the past years. An American scientist says the temperature will grow 3 degrees if the carbon dioxide doubles. Richard Alley, a professor from PennsylvaniaUniversity, also agrees with this estimation.

However, there are still some problems. The climate is not always that sensitive. Different experiment methods lead to different results. The increase of the temperature varies from 4.5  to 7 . And some other research has suggested that strong sensitivity does not mean the rise in temperature. Statistics in the past have shown that the influence of carbon dioxide on the climate will always exist and the Earth will still be getting warmer if its proportion does not decline. In one word, the Earth will be under greater pressure if it is so sensitive.

There are many factors affecting the temperature and the climate. Carbon dioxide is and will be the most important one. We can predict that the temperature will rise by at least 3  if its content doubles. And it will get worse and worse in the next few centuries.