14 DAY TRIAL // According to the most complex computer simulation on the climate future of our planet, it would appear that predictions first made about six years ago were off. That is to say, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) experts, using the Integrated Global Systems Model, found that the situation might be a lot worse than first thought. The simulation indicated a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90 percent probability of the warming being concentrated in the 3.5 to 7.4-degree range.
Unlike other computer models, the MIT team ran approximately 400 simulations on their machines, each of them different than the next, and all accounting for factors such as the population growth, the conomic woes (the first model to do that), as well as the economic activity and plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the slight variations in the input parameters, the results came out roughly the same, and the verdict was catastrophic. If action was not taken soon, then the world could expect large climate changes by the end of this century, the Report, published in this month's issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, bleakly concluded.
A number of elements that were used for the first studies, six years ago, were changed in the new model, on account of the fact that more up-to-date information became available. The new simulations took into account the fact that states emitting low amounts of GHG did not reduce their output, and also accounted for the disappearing effect that erupting volcanoes in the 20th century had on the climate. The new model also compensated for rises in ocean temperatures, which hinted at how much carbon dioxide they could suck up from the atmosphere, as opposed to the amounts we put out there.
“The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies,” MIT Center for Global Change Science Director Ronald Prinn, who is also the co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, said of our options. He urged authorities around the world to start considering making changes in the way they ran their businesses as soon as possible, giving as an example the fact that polluting automobiles and fossil-fuel power plants lasted for years, and decades, respectively. If we wait for them to break up on their own, we may get past the point of no return.