Gerald Meehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and his colleagues are more than pessimistic about the evolution of global warming. According to their work published in Science, even assuming a net cessation of all greenhouse gas emissions linked to human activity, global warming is inevitable.

At the end of the 21st century, in the best of cases, the average global air temperature will thus gain 0,5 ° C and the sea level 11 cm. The researchers synthesized the results of numerous simulations of two types of climate models - the Parallel Climate Model (PCM) and the Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) - carried out on the supercomputers of the NCAR and the laboratories of the US Department of Energy and on the Japanese Earth Simulator.

Despite differences between the two regarding the intensity of the phenomenon, the observed trend remains the same: the increase in global temperature and sea level over the next 100 years. For the researchers, this inevitability could be explained in large part by the thermal inertia of the oceans and the long life cycle of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The model simulations performed (which do not take into account
the impact of melting glaciers and ice caps) confirm the need to act strongly to avoid further aggravating the future situation.

WP 18 / 03 / 05 (Global warming inevitable, data show)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45040-2005Mar17.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=7161