Cutting carbon emissions could have more immediate benefits, says study
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028497
Ars Technica: Previous studies have proposed that because of the heat capacity of Earth’s oceans, the benefits of cutting fossil fuel emissions could take almost a half century to be realized. However, new research shows that the median time between a given carbon dioxide emission and maximum warming may be much less than that. The researchers gauged Earth’s temperature response by simulating the effect of a pulse of 100 gigatons of CO2 that abruptly ceases. The researchers focused on three variables: climate sensitivity, the ocean’s thermal inertia, and carbon cycle activity. For 90% of their simulations, surface temperature stopped rising in as little as 10 years. The point of the study was to demonstrate the early benefits of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
