A team of scientists found that carbon dioxide becomes a more potent greenhouse gas as more is released into the atmosphere.
The new study, led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, was published in Science and comes as world leaders meet in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week for the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28.
“Our finding means that as the climate responds to increases in carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide itself becomes a more potent greenhouse gas,” said the study’s senior author Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the Rosenstiel School. “It is yet further confirmation that carbon emissions must be curbed sooner rather than later to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.”
In this study, the researchers used state-of-the-art climate models and other tools to analyze the effect increasing CO2 has on a region of the upper atmosphere—known as the stratosphere—that scientists have long known cools with increasing CO2 concentrations. They found that this stratosphere cooling causes subsequent increases in CO2 to have a larger heat-trapping effect than previous increases, causing carbon dioxide to become more potent as a greenhouse gas.
The amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere from a proportionate increase in CO2, which scientists call radiative forcing, has long been thought of as a constant that does not change over time.
2023-11-30 19:41:02
Link from phys.org