ENVIRONMENT: Global Warming Becomes Hot News

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 12 2004 (IPS) - New fears have arisen over global warming after some measurements pointed to an unusual rise in carbon dioxide levels over the past two years.

The Guardian and The Independent newspapers in Britain ran first lead stories on the new measurements. Reports of rising carbon levels in the air became the lead story also on several television news channels.

The reported rise in carbon dioxide levels was unusual, and it was matched by unusually prominent reporting of a global warming story. The reporting was some measure that global warming is coming home.

The two British newspapers carried reports Monday of measurements taken by U.S. physicist Charles Keeling from the University of California at San Diego at an observatory on top of Mauna Loa, an 11,000ft high volcano in Hawaii.

Keeling has been among the first scientists to measure carbon dioxide levels. He had measured 315 parts per million (ppm) by volume of carbon dioxide back in 1958. Today it stands at 376 ppm. Scientists believe increased levels of carbon dioxide trap heat, much as a greenhouse does, which is why carbon dioxide and methane are described often as greenhouse gases.

Keeling now reports that the rate of increase is going up. From an average of 1.6 ppm through his early decades of measurement, it rose by 2.08 ppm from 2001 to 2002 and by 2.54 ppm from 2002 to 2003. There was no corresponding rise in emissions, and no natural phenomena to explain this increase.

That increase is still too little and too early to be more than potentially alarming, say scientists at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Britain, a leading climate research institute.

”The unusual rise for two years in a row is certainly along the lines of what we predict over the course of the century,” Christians Jones, climate researcher at the Hadley Centre told IPS. By itself it is not a final indicator, just as an unusually hot summer or two are not evidence of global warming, he said.

”But if this unusual increase were to continue for a number of years, that would be very worrying,” Jones said.

Scientists are still trying to figure out the reasons for this increase. ”The overall increase over a number of years is definitely due to fossil fuel use,” Jones said. ”On top of that there seems to be a variability due to natural processes.”

Jones said that natural systems like forests and oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but it was possible that ”natural systems are not taking up carbon and have started to release it instead.”

Studies carried out by the Hadley centre have already shown ”a tendency to amplify the carbon system by releasing more carbon.” Scientists will be monitoring levels closely over the next few years, Jones said, to determine whether this rise was a trend rather than fluctuation.

The fact that the reported and unprecedented rise in carbon dioxide levels does not arise from increased emissions should not let industry off the hook, Catherine Pearce, climate change campaigner at Friends of the Earth told IPS. ”This should mean a huge pressure on industry to do more, not less,” she said.

Pearce said that while scientists are still trying to understand the reasons for the increased levels, one factor could be that ”a lot of countries are industrialising rapidly, and not reporting it as clearly as they should.”

Signs that the earth and the oceans are unable to absorb sufficient levels of carbon dioxide should bring ”a sense of urgency” to addressing this problem, she said. The reported increase in carbon dioxide levels, and the prominence with which this had been reported in the media have ”brought home the fact that global warming is a problem, and it isn’t just going to go away,” she said.