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Analysis of Pacific Ocean sediments shows doubling atmospheric CO2 might raise Earth’s temperature by up to 14 degrees, exceeding IPCC predictions, with historical data indicating significant future climate impacts.
Doubling the atmospheric CO2 levels could raise Earth’s average temperature by 7 to 14 degrees Celsius (13 to 25.2 degrees Fahrenheit), according to sediment analysis from the Pacific Ocean near California conducted by researchers from NIOZ and the Universities of Utrecht and Bristol.
The results were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
“The temperature rise we found is much larger than the 2.3 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (4.1 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) that the UN climate panel, IPCC, has been estimating so far,” said the first author, Caitlyn Witkowski.
45-year-old drill core
The researchers used a 45-year-old drill core extracted from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. “I realized that this core is very attractive for researchers, because the ocean floor at that spot has had oxygen-free conditions for many millions of years,” said Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damsté, senior scientist at NIOZ and professor of organic geochemistry at Utrecht University.
“As a result, organic matter is not broken down as quickly by microbes and more carbon is preserved,” Damsté said. He was also the supervisor of Witkowski, whose doctorate thesis included this research.
Unique time series
“CO2 over the past 15 million years has never before been examined from a single location,” Witkowski said. The upper thousand meters of the drill core correspond to the past 18 million years.
From this record, the researchers were able to extract an indication of the past seawater temperature and an indication of ancient atmospheric CO2 levels, using a new approach.
Derived temperature
The researchers derived the temperature using a method developed 20 years ago at NIOZ, called the TEX86 method. “That method uses specific substances that are present in the membrane of archaea, a distinct class of microorganisms,” Damsté explains.
“Those archaea optimize the chemical composition of their membrane depending on the temperature of the water in the upper 200 meters of the ocean. Substances from that membrane can be found as molecular fossils in the ocean sediments, and analyzed to this day.”
CO2 from chlorophyll and cholesterol
The researchers developed a new approach to derive past atmospheric CO2 content by using the chemical composition of two specific substances commonly found in algae: chlorophyll and cholesterol. This is the first study to use cholesterol for quantitative CO2 and the first study to use chlorophyll for this time period. To create these substances, algae must absorb CO2 from the water and fix it via photosynthesis.
Damsté: “A very small fraction of the carbon on Earth occurs in a ‘heavy form,’ 13C instead of the usual 12C. Algae have a clear preference for 12C. However: the lower the CO2 concentration in the water, the more algae will also use the rare 13C. Thus, the 13C content of these two substances is a measure of the CO2 content of the ocean water. And that in turn, according to solubility laws, correlates with the CO2 content of the atmosphere.”
Using this new method, it appears that the CO2 concentration dropped from about 650 parts per million, 15 million years back, to 280 just before the industrial revolution.
Stronger relationship
When the researchers plot the derived temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels of the past 15 million years against each other, they find a strong relationship. The average temperature 15 million years ago was over 18 degrees Celsius (64.4 degrees Fahrenheit): 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today and about the level that the UN Climate Panel, IPCC, predicts for the year 2100 in the most extreme scenario.
“So, this research gives us a glimpse of what the future could hold if we take too few measures to reduce CO2 emissions and also implement few technological innovations to offset emissions,” Damsté said. “The clear warning from this research is: CO2 concentration is likely to have a stronger impact on temperature than we are currently taking into account!”
Reference: “Continuous sterane and phytane δ13C record reveals a substantial pCO2 decline since the mid-Miocene” by Caitlyn R. Witkowski, Anna S. von der Heydt, Paul J. Valdes, Marcel T. J. van der Meer, Stefan Schouten and Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté, 18 June 2024, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-47676-9
14 Comments
As humans could survive +400° Celsius, the temperature shall indefinitely rise upto about +325° Celsius ! This is the heat humans produce every year and releasing it directly into rivers, oceans and atmosphere ! Forget all you know and parrot stories about climate ! Free report ondemand available.
As humans could survive +400° Celsius, the temperature shall indefinitely rise upto about +325° Celsius ! This is the heat humans produce every year and releasing it directly into rivers, oceans and atmosphere ! Forget all you know and parrot stories about climate ! Free report ondemand available.
I lol whenever I read articles about Co2 and thier claims of it increasing the world’s temperatures! The world is forever changing! The world tilt/rotation has changed as well as true north. If you don’t believe me look it up, and also the earth inner core rotation has slowed, and some claim changed direction. These major earth changes will have more impact on earth temperatures then these silly Co2 money grab claims! Paying more in taxes to corrupt governments so they can lower worlds temperatures…Really? They can’t even win war on drugs or solve homelessness…how much are they already stealing and both of those major issues have gotten far worse! Trees and plants need Co2! You start reducing Co2 too much life will die on earth! Please stop with these silly articles and go do your homework! You just look silly and indoctrinated not educated!
Even if all the factors you cite are independent of human behavior, the reality is that we can sit by and watch ourselves succumb to the new climate, or we can take action designed to mitigate human risk. Your method of do nothing, seems foolish. We are a smart species, perhaps we will find a solution, but not if we give up and decide there is nothing to be done.
Oft-repeated and debunked claims.
Earth’s climate has changed often in the past, but those changes probable killed billions of animals, including humans or pre-human primates. The humans that were around could just pick up and move, they didn’t have trillions of dollars of infrastructure they’d have to leave behind, not did they have fixed national borders to cross. And finally, those past temperature changes happened SLOWLY — the RATE of change today is unprecedented. It’s one thing to adapt to a big climate swing over tens of thousands of year, quite another to deal with it in a few centuries.
As for plants and CO2, this is just nonsense. Plants did just fine for centuries at 280 ppm CO2. We’re now at 425 ppm. Plants do a LITTLE with more CO2 — it’s called “CO2 Greening,” and all of the climate models account for it. But it’s very limited, because no matter how much CO2 you give to plants, some OTHER factor will still limit growth — sunlight, water, nutrients, etc. We are far above normal, historical CO2 levels — we’d have to get far below those before “life will die on Earth.”
You are the one who looks silly. Leave science to the scientists.
God’s word tell us the the sun will scorch the earth with fervent heat in the last days before the return of Christ Jesus. If man thinks he can stop what God says by throwing money at it he/she is very ignorant of God’s plan
Haven’t we heard all this before. Time after time they make predictions and time after time they’re wrong. Yet each time they made these predictions it results paying more taxes. My city was supposed to be under water 20years ago. Guess what, it’s still here with no noticeable change in sea level. Last year they tried blaming forest fires in climate change yet the locals in Greece confirmed they had arrested numerous people for starting them. Don’t believe the news, the news isnt there to inform you, it’s there to push their agenda in you. Media is pushing misinformation but because they do it for the right people it’s ok.
Sizzlenasty by name Clearly not taking the medication.The drivel dribbling from his/her mouth is truly tragic
Sizzlenasty THE NAME SAYS IT ALL REALLY
Earth has gone through changes before. We as a planet, move through space as does our galaxy. These are major contributors to the climate change discussion.
Clearly, there is a lot of uncertainty in this field, and lots of assumptions being made. The tragedy is that political policy is being made using this “science”, and geo-engineering projects are being proposed to alter the Earth’s environment to mitigate the problems theorized by these scientists who do this guesswork. They say humans are the cause of the environmental problems we allegedly face, but insist humans are the solution, too. Part of the problem is that the goal of science is to monkey with nature and change it. We can’t just study things and leave them alone. Human arrogance has us playing god with everything. But we aren’t god. We are just silly, ignorant, irrational, curious, and arrogant creatures, willing to act on our poorly-understood narrative of how everything works.
Okay, I’m NOT a scientist by any stretch but reading this makes me wonder if the article isn’t using the wrong number:
“Our reconstructed pCO2 values across the past 15 million years suggest Earth system sensitivity averages 13.9 °C per doubling of pCO2 and equilibrium climate sensitivity averages 7.2 °C per doubling of pCO2.”
So what’s the difference between the ‘Earth system sensitivity’ and the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity?’ Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad either way: 7.2 °C per doubling of pCO2 is still definitely game over. But it sounds like this is just confirming what the so-called ‘hot models’ have already predicted, putting the climate sensitivity at around 5°C.
And again, not trying to minimize this at all. A rise of 5-7°C will be devastating for all life on Earth.
Haven’t we heard all this before. Time after time they make predictions and time after time they’re wrong. Yet each time they made these predictions it results paying more taxes. My city was supposed to be under water 20years ago. Guess what, it’s still here with no noticeable change in sea level. Last year they tried blaming forest fires in climate change yet the locals in Greece confirmed they had arrested numerous people for starting them. Don’t believe the news, the news isnt there to inform you, it’s there to push their agenda in you. Media is pushing misinformation but because they do it for the right people it’s ok.
The only solution is to go to full scale green hydrogen technologies immediately. There is no other choice. Green hydrogen can replace all fossil fuels, and if needed, creating synthetic hydrocarbon fuels recycling the existing co2. The long term cost will be insignificant because the green hydrogen is infinitely available.