Warming effects of CO2 felt just a decade after release

LONDON, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- A common narrative in the discussion about global warming is that polluters are simply passing the problem onto the next generation. The implied message being that any negative effects of today's CO2 emissions won't be realized until decades later.

But new research suggests today's polluters will witness the atmospheric and environmental damage they've wrought within their lifetime -- and then some. The warming effects of CO2, it turns out, can be felt just a decade after the gas's release into the atmosphere. And these effects, researchers at the Carnegie Institute for Science report, can last more than a century.

Likewise, the new research means efforts made to curb carbon emissions, like those adopted by the German government Wednesday, will have an effect within ten years.

"Amazingly, despite many decades of climate science, there has never been a study focused on how long it takes to feel the warming from a particular emission of carbon dioxide, taking carbon-climate uncertainties into consideration," lead study author Katharine Ricke said in a press release.

The work of Ricke and her colleagues was published this week in Environmental Research Letters, a journal published by the Institute of Physics.

Scientists used two prominent climate change prediction models to look at the effects of the release of single unit of CO2 and found that its maximum warming potential was reached just 10.1 years later. The reason there is any lag at all is that for the first decade of atmospheric warming, the ocean is working to absorb that heat. But as the ocean warms, it heats the atmosphere too. And after ten years, any mitigating role the ocean plays has been canceled out.

"Our results show that people alive today are very likely to benefit from emissions avoided today and that these will not accrue solely to impact future generations," Ricke added. "Our findings should dislodge previous misconceptions about this timeframe that have played a key part in the failure to reach policy consensus."