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The chilling reality of climate change
By JULIE WESOLOWSKI
Reporter Contributor
Few dispute that global warming is a fact. In the last century alone, the climate has increased about .7 degrees Celsius. But a UB faculty member hit closer to home by stating that in the year 2100, upstate New York will have a climate that feels more like Virginia or Georgia.
An audience of an estimated 300 gathered for a presentation yesterday entitled “The Arctic is Melting” led by Jason Briner, assistant professor in the Department of Geology, College of Arts and Sciences. This timely UBThisSummer lecture focused on why the Arctic’s climate changes are among the most profound occurring today, how changes in arctic sea ice have a dramatic effect on the rest of the world and what can be learned from studying the Earth’s own records.
Although there are three important factors that increase global warming—solar activity, volcanoes and greenhouse gases—Briner said only the increased levels of CO2 and methane greenhouse gases relate directly back to human behavior, stemming specifically from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and onward to present day.
Briner explained that as the global climate warms, Arctic temperatures rise at an accelerated rate. As sea ice melts, the Arctic ice loses its critical solar reflective shield, increasing the melting process. He cited this past September 2007 as an alarming example of when the seasonal melting of the Arctic Ocean resulted in the smallest amount of sea ice ever recorded. Briner presented data that has tracked the amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean since the 1980s and stated that the Arctic will become seasonally ice free. “That’s probably going to happen no matter what we do. It’s not a matter of if but when,” he said.
As a paleoclimatologist, Briner studies past climates to see how the Earth responded during previous changes. He pulls this info from ice cores, tree rings and sediment layers, the Earth’s natural archives and where info from past climates is stored. By collecting these organic remains and radiocarbon dating them, they can tell when the last ice cap went through the landscape. He explained that ice core samples are like “two-mile time machines where the fossil air samples can indicate natural fluctuations in the Earth’s atmosphere.” And this, he believes, correlates a strong link between the Earth’s temperature and CO2 concentrations.
As Briner and his counterparts gather more data, computer models can help predict the rate of ice sheet melting. “In the future, the amount melted will rise the sea levels 12 feet, hundreds of years from now,” he said.
But because humans are the main cause of increased greenhouse gases, according to Briner, we still have an opportunity to change the fate of the planet. “Do we continue to live our lives business as usual and create more CO2? Or do we try to curb the greenhouse gases and try to live a greener lifestyle?” he asked. “It’s basically up to us to decide what amount of CO2 is in our atmosphere. We have some say in what will happen.”