From the New
York Times:
New research suggests that global
warming is causing the cycle of evaporation and rainfall over the oceans to
intensify more than scientists had expected, an ominous finding that may
indicate a higher potential for extreme weather in coming decades.
By measuring changes in salinity on
the ocean’s surface, the researchers inferred that the water cycle had
accelerated by about 4 percent over the last half century. . . . If the
estimate holds up, it implies that the water cycle could quicken by as much as
20 percent later in this century as the planet warms, potentially leading to
more droughts and floods.
“This provides another piece of
independent evidence that we need to start taking the problem of global warming
seriously,” said Paul J. Durack, a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California and the lead author of a paper being
published Friday in the journal Science.
The researchers’ analysis found
that over the half century that began in 1950, salty areas of the ocean became
saltier, while fresh areas became fresher. That change was attributed to
stronger patterns of evaporation and precipitation over the ocean.
The new paper is not the first to
find an intensification of the water cycle, nor even the first to calculate
that it might be fairly large. But the paper appears to marshal more scientific
evidence than any paper to date in support of a high estimate. . . .
The paper is the latest installment
in a long-running effort by scientists to solve one of the most vexing puzzles
about global warming. While basic physics suggests that warming must accelerate
the cycle of evaporation and rainfall, it has been difficult to get a handle on
how much acceleration has already occurred, and thus to project the changes
that are likely to result from continued planetary warming.
The fundamental problem is that
measurements of evaporation and precipitation over the ocean — which covers 71
percent of the earth’s surface, holds 97 percent of its water and is where most
evaporation and precipitation occurs — are spotty at best. To overcome that,
scientists are trying to use the changing saltiness of the ocean’s surface as a
kind of rain gauge. That works because, as rain falls on a patch of the ocean,
it freshens the surface water. Conversely, in a region where evaporation
exceeds rainfall, the surface becomes saltier.
The variations in salinity are
large enough that they can be detected from space, and NASA recently sent up a
new satellite, Aquarius, for that purpose. But it will take years to obtain
results, and scientists like Dr. Durack are trying to get a jump on the problem
by using older observations, including salinity measurements taken by ships as
well as recent measurements from an army of robotic floats launched in an
international program called Argo. . . .
Kevin E. Trenberth of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said that Dr. Durack had
produced intriguing evidence that global warming was already creating changes
in the water cycle at a regional scale. But Dr. Trenberth added that he doubted
that the global intensification could be as large as Dr. Durack’s group had
found. “I think he might have gone a bit too far,” he said.
Assuming that the paper withstands
scrutiny, it suggests that a global warming of about 1 degree Fahrenheit over
the past half century has been enough to intensify the water cycle by about 4
percent. That led Dr. Durack to project a possible intensification of about 20
percent as the planet warms by several degrees in the coming century.
That would be approximately twice
the amplification shown by the computer programs used to project the climate,
according to Dr. Durack’s calculations. Those programs are often criticized by
climate-change skeptics who contend that they overestimate future changes, but
Dr. Durack’s paper is the latest of several indications that the estimates may
actually be conservative.
The new paper confirms a
long-expected pattern for the ocean that also seems to apply over land: areas
with a lot of rainfall in today’s climate are expected to become wetter,
whereas dry areas are expected to become drier.
In the climate of the future,
scientists fear, a large acceleration of the water cycle could feed greater
weather extremes. Perhaps the greatest risk from global warming, they say, is
that important agricultural areas could dry out, hurting the food supply, as
other regions get more torrential rains and floods.
Justin Gillis, “Study
Indicates a Greater Threat of Extreme Weather,” New York Times, April 26,
2012
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