By itself, a doubling of CO2
in the atmosphere has only a modest effect on global
temperatures – an increase of around 1ºC. Even a quadrupling of
CO2 in the atmosphere would only cause a direct
temperature increase of about 2ºC (1).
However, this modest increase can be either amplified or reduced
depending on the feedback effects.
Some feedback effects are clearly
positive. For example, warmer climates cause ice to melt, and
the darker surface exposed by melting ice is much less
reflective than ice and would therefore tend to absorb more heat,
thus amplifying the initial warming.
Another positive feedback effect
is related to the solubility of CO2 in water, which
is negatively related to temperature. Thus, when oceans warm,
they release CO2 to the atmosphere, amplifying the
initial effect. This is the effect responsible for the close
relationship between temperature and CO2 over the
last several hundred thousand years, with changes in CO2
concentrations lagging behind changes in temperature by a few
hundred years (see Figure 1).
Figure 1:
Temperature and atmospheric CO2 over the last 400,000
years as measured from the Vostok ice core.
Source:
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/400000yrfig.htm
Other
feedback effects are negative, however. For example, higher
temperatures cause more evaporation and thus more clouds. Clouds
have a net cooling effect, which means that they would tend to
reduce the initial heating effect.
The
whole global warming debate is really a debate about these
feedback effects. If, all together, the feedback effects are
negative, then the planet will warm less than 1ºC over this
century, which is hardly anything to despair about. However, if
the net feedback effects are positive, then the planet may get
progressively warmer, which would clearly be a cause for concern.
Our
theoretical understanding of the feedback effects is very
incomplete, which means that we rely on empirical data to
calibrate the climate models. So far, most climate models have
been calibrated with positive net feedback effects. The Stern
Report even includes studies that ten-double the initial effect,
thus predicting warming of more than 10ºC during this century.
The
ice core data from Figure 1 is useful to evaluate these feedback
effects. If they were dramatically positive, as suggested by the
Stern Report, then at times of high CO2, we would
expect ever increasing temperatures and ever increasing CO2
concentrations due to the positive feedbacks from melting ice
and CO2 released from the warming oceans. In fact,
every time temperatures reached a bit above the current level,
both temperatures and CO2 levels plunged dramatically,
instead of continuing upwards.
Similarly, during cold periods with low CO2
concentrations, we would expect ever decreasing temperatures due
to the positive feedbacks of increasing ice coverage causing
higher reflectivity and colder oceans absorbing ever more CO2,
thus further reducing the temperature. But in fact, although the
downward trend in both temperatures and CO2
concentrations has clearly been dominant over the last 400,000
years, the planet has recovered from every single ice age ever
experienced, instead of getting progressively colder.
If
the net feedback effects were positive, the climate system would
be unstable, and we would be heading towards an ever warmer
planet or an ever colder planet. But for hundreds of millions of
years, the global temperature has always oscillated within a 10ºC
range, even during periods when atmospheric CO2
concentrations were more than 10 times higher than today
(2). This is incredibly strong evidence
of a negative feedback effect.
Unless humans have caused the laws of the universe to change
lately, I suspect that the net feedback effects are still
negative. The average global temperature may still increase by a
couple of degrees before those negative feedback effects really
kick in (see Figure 1), but any increase larger than that would
be difficult to reconcile with the data.