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Moderated Global Warming Discussion

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OK first the 4-6 degrees by the end of the century is only if we don't do any mitigation at all so it should be a wake up call to all politicians and buisness leaders that we really need to cut our carbon emissions starting now, but this article with it's talk of runaway climate change sounds a bit like a counsel of despair that implies "hey we've left it too late to do anything about it so why bother" then " but hey we could fix it with some geo-engineering (which doesn't actually exist yet) if only it weren't for those stupid greenies"
This whole article is really annoying, he recognizes (and possibly overstates) the problem of AGW but then blames the people who've been trying to get something done about it for the fact that nothing's been done, and completely ignores the concerted opposition they've faced from powerful vested interests.

Yeah I found it annoying too which surprised me because the magazine he edits is actually really, really good.

CapelDodger - thanks for the pep talk! Feel better about it already
 
pretty definitive....source and conclusion....

The Global Carbon Project, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has calculated that emissions rose by 3 per cent last year, and 2.6 per cent this year, despite the weak global economy.

Dr Pep Canadell from the CSIRO was one of the lead authors of the report, and says the growth in emissions is shocking.

"Our analysis showed that by the end of this year, 2012, global emissions from fossil fuels are set to reach an unprecedented amount of 26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide," he says.

"Just to put this thing in perspective, this is 58 per cent over 1990, which is the Kyoto Protocol reference year, and growing at about three times faster than they were growing during the 90s."

He says on current trends, governments globally will have no chance of averting dangerous climate change.

"We are now following perfectly on track of the emissions path that will take us to anywhere between 4 and 6 degrees by 2100, if we don't do anything different from what we are doing now," he says.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/12/03/3645929.htm

and of course given the track record - this might even be conservative. I see no willingness to do much of anything significant on a scale that will avoid this.
 
Except there is one that we are aware of .....methane.
and that sleeping dragon is stirring. :(

What's going on in the north is truly frightening.

I often think back to Jerusalem before the final fall. There were those who insisted that defying Rome was the way to go because God would save them. Then there must have been those looking at their kids and thinking, oh my God, what are these fools getting us into?

And the worst part is, the Roman legions were paper tigers compared to the deaf and implacable forces of physics.
 
Gas hydrates in Arctic are shallowest yet found

Undersea methane hydrate deposit could serve as climate-change canary.


07 December 2012 http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.7803.1354914929!/image/1.11988-AY006656.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_300/1.11988-AY006656.jpg

The Beaufort Sea's shallow methane-hydrate deposits are particularly vulnerable to rising sea temperatures.
R. Gehman/Corbis

A 'test case' for how undersea deposits of methane — a greenhouse gas locked in sediments — might respond to climate change has been uncovered in the Arctic Circle.



http://www.nature.com/news/gas-hydrates-in-arctic-are-shallowest-yet-found-1.11988
 
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Let's go from last to first. Has this last piece any importance to the matter or is it used just for hype?

To answer that we can analyse it trimmed for hype:

Gas hydrates in Arctic are shallowest yet found

Undersea methane hydrate deposit could serve as climate-change canary.



A 'test case' for how undersea deposits of methane — a greenhouse gas locked in sediments — might respond to climate change has been uncovered in the Arctic Circle.
The shallowest known deposit of methane hydrate — a crystalline solid comprising methane molecules trapped in an ice-lattice structure — has been discovered on the continental slope off Canada in the Beaufort Sea.

... the methane trapped in such deposits represents an immense global carbon reservoir. Some experts fear that destabilization of such gas-hydrate deposits around the world — caused by changes in sea temperature or drilling, for example — could cause a release of methane into the environment and accelerate global warming.
At such a shallow depth, the newly discovered deposit is vulnerable to decomposition if there is even subtle warming of the overlaying water, says Paull.

Landslides and tsunamis
Some climate scientists fear that gas-hydrate decomposition could also create geohazards — for example, by destabilizing the sea floor and causing landslides and accompanying tsunamis.
and add a praise on the seriousness of Nature to leverage the hype.

picture.php


Or we can select what is anti-hype

Gas hydrates in Arctic are shallowest yet found

Undersea methane hydrate deposit could serve as climate-change canary.


A 'test case' for how undersea deposits of methane — a greenhouse gas locked in sediments — might respond to climate change has been uncovered in the Arctic Circle.


This particular deposit is only modest in size, but ...at such a shallow depth, the newly discovered deposit is vulnerable to decomposition

Because this deposit is small, the methane released by its decomposition would not substantially affect the Earth's climate, says Paull. However, the discovery could give some hints about, for example, how much methane could be released when a deposit begins to decompose as the sea warms.
"This is a great place to study what happens,” under such conditions Paull says.

Timothy Collett, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado,... urged caution in speculating about potential geohazards that might result from decomposition of methane hydrate deposits. “We don't have proof in the geological record that any of that has ever happened before,” he says.
and criticize the author Zoë Corbyn for the alarmist bits we had to edit out and tell that she has written recently about "Wrens teach their eggs to sing", "Blind mole rats may hold key to cancer" or "Integrative genome analyses identify key somatic driver mutations of small-cell lung cancer" among a variety of subjects.

But we can also actually read the article in a critical fashion and forget the author.

The article is just ordinary press with bits of thrilling "what if ..." and "some [unnamed] scientists fear" used to entice the public, together with bone and flesh named scientists saying "yes, it is a concern", "we're here to learn", "this may be good" and "it's not know to have happened before", to keep the seriousness.

What is it adding to the subject? Almost nothing. This subject, is it important? Of course [more on this on my next post]
 
About what may be redeemable from that article:

The deposit is said to be susceptible to warming and to be close to the surface. The same article says that another deposit 35% deeper was discovered in Yucatan. Unless someone imagine Mayan skiing on snow over the pyramids, this place is already warm.

The key, and the article refer to that, is the combination of pressure and temperature. It is said that some consider 270m the horizon where stability starts for the actual temperatures, so in the future, with warming ...

If you want to know about the distribution of methane from hydrates you may read this paper: A review of the geochemistry of methane in natural gas hydrate or simply read the article in Wikipedia.

The right questions are:
How is the shallow lithosphere temperature profile now in the polar regions?
How is it likely to change on different levels of warming?
How long will that take?
How much methane may be released?
Is there something we can do about that methane?

The simple answer is "nothing we must care when compared with methane released directly from permafrost becoming taiga". Mixing up deep deposits of methane hydrates with methane released from the permafrost is like saying that glacier melting in the Himalayas can raise the level of the sea as if it is Greenland ice shelf or Antarctica.

Methane from permafrost is a concern -and a big one- but it's hardly a surprise nor an undetermined factor. For instance, the RCP45 model of GHG emissions -a pretty calm one- proposes CO2 concentrations raising from 370 ppmv in 2000 to 490 ppmv in 2050 and 540 ppmv in 2100, but about methane, it prescribes a pretty constant level of emissions all the century. Have they forgotten chlatrates? No, the release depends on temperature and that should be included in models: they have to determine how much methane have to be released depending on the actual course of local temperatures every model reaches.

Emission scenarios depart from expected human activity. Models should include natural processes. Do they?

About mid-depth deposits of methane hydrates the simplistic answer is "we can dig a hole and sell the methane". It's not as simple as that but the future won't fall too far from this.
 
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[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=956&pictureid=7033[/qimg]

You have both kinds of uncertainty represented there.

"both" kinds? Could you please point me to where these are explained?

What is this graph really showing us?
 
Geez Alec talk about overdoing it and being misleading.

The deposit is useful because it is shallow so acts as a gauge for release temperatures. There ARE significant plumes already being released.
There are large deposits on all continental shelves and many in warm and shallow waters.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ates_1996.svg/800px-Gas_hydrates_1996.svg.png

The methane threat is not confined to clathrates but from a variety of sources including the tundra/taiga, animal husbandry and industrial outputs.

Of the GHGs emitted as a result of human activities, methane is the second most important GHG after carbon dioxide (CO2), accounting for 14 percent of global GHG emissions in 2005.3 Though methane is emitted into the atmosphere in smaller quantities than CO2, its global warming potential (i.e., the ability of the gas to trap heat in the atmosphere) is 25 times that of CO2, resulting in methane's stronger influence on warming during its 12-year atmospheric life time.
Reducing methane emissions, therefore, can have significant climate change benefits, especially in the near term.
http://www.globalmethane.org/about/methane.aspx

so no it's not a minor issue as you would leave your readers thinking....and that is a disservice.

Clathrates may be even be a useful storage as it's a decent fuel and C02 can be pumped into the matrix and be sequestered as the useful methane is used for fuel.
http://www.scientific.net/AMR.433-440.1260

The Japanese are exploring "mining" methane

In a bid to shore up its precarious energy security Japan is to start commercial test drilling for controversial frozen methane gas along its coast next year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/27/energy-industry-energy

Despite your off base discounting of the threat.....these rather well qualified scientists consider it a significant threat - even from the clathrates...

17 October 2012, 2.47pm AEST
Methane hydrates: a volatile time bomb in the Arctic

The risk with climate change is not with the direct effect of humans on the greenhouse capacity of Earth’s atmosphere. The major risk is that the relatively modest human perturbation will unleash much greater forces. The likelihood of this risk is intimately tied to the developments over the next decade in the Arctic.

AUTHORS

Carlos Duarte
Director, Oceans Institute at University of Western Australia

Antonio Delgado Huertas
Staff Scientist at Spanish Scientific Research Council CSIC
http://theconversation.edu.au/methane-hydrates-a-volatile-time-bomb-in-the-arctic-9891

Methane is potent and one of the research areas is how a thawing Taiga/Tundra would release and transform both methane and C02 in what mix.

from the article above

Recent assessments have found bubbling of methane on the Siberian shelf. Models suggest that global warming of 3°C could release between 35 and 94 Gt C of methane, which could add up to an additional 0.5°C of global warming. Moreover, frozen soils and sediments contain large amounts of methane hydrates that can be released to the atmosphere. Indeed, rapid thawing of the Arctic permaforst has been reported to lead to the release of large amounts of methane

This is a very current article

"The release of carbon dioxide and methane from warming permafrost is irreversible: once the organic matter thaws and decays away, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost," said lead author Kevin Schaefer, from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"Anthropogenic emissions' targets in the climate change treaty need to account for these emissions or we risk overshooting the 2°C maximum warming target," he added.

Watch this youtube interview with Lead author Professor Kevin Schaefer, Research Scientist at the University of Colorado being interviewed at the climate talks in Doha:

The report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost (PDF) - was published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and launched at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Doha on November 27. (See media release)

Climate projections indicate substantial loss of permafrost by 2100, yet the substantial emissions of methane and carbon dioxide have not yet been factored in to emission reduction targets and the Global Emissions Gap during the UN auspiced climate negotiations. The report estimates that Warming permafrost could emit 43 to 135 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2100, and 246 to 415 gigatonnes by 2200. Emissions could start within the next few decades and continue for several centuries and may account for up to 39 per cent of total emissions.

As permafrost, the organic matter is locked away, inert. But as the earth warms, the ice in the soil melts and the organics in the soil start decomposing, producing methane and carbon dioxide that bubble up through the soil into the atmosphere.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/30/18726866.php

What that mix is has short and long term implications for the climate. More methane means a more rapid rise and potential positive feedback, more C02 means a slower impact but one that does not drop out in a couple of decades.

Understanding the rate of release of methane from a variety of sources not just in the Arctic provides insight into the real world processed that can be incorporated into the projections as, apparently, it is not now.

A shallow deposit in a rapidly warming area is a good gauge. That's all the article covered Alec.

That said, methane from the variety of sources IS the 900lb gorilla in terms of uncertainty and potential risk and not one to be discounted at all.

Hell, we should all be eating roo burgers. :rolleyes:
 
How accurate do you guys consider these graphs and predictions?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images.../12/7/1354889063615/IiB-CO2-graphic-3-001.jpg

Especially these points:

  • +2c rise in temperatures would cause Amsterdam to flood knee high by the year 2100.
  • +3-4c rise in temperatures would cause New York to flood knee high by the year 2100.
What exactly do they mean by this:

  • +3-4c rise in temperatures -> "Italy, Spain, Greece deserts"
You can find their sources from this site:

bit.ly/CO2gigatons
 
There seems to be a growing concern that the IPCC estimates are too conservative on sea sea level rise given the accelerating glacial loss and recent measurements. NY is vulnerable due to other factors as well.

26 Jun 2012 – The sea level on a stretch of the US Atlantic coast that features the cities of New York, Norfolk and Boston is rising up to four times faster than ...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21969-sealevel-rise-accelerates-faster-on-us-east-coast.html

Lower Manhattan is not that far above sea level and there are km of tunnels to consider.
Sandy was just taste.
I used to consider sea level rises a long term threat....seems even that is due for an adjustment.

But there can never be much accuracy that far out with human activity being a major variable and positive feedbacks like an open Arctic Ocean and a melting Taiga/Tundra in play as well as Greenland and the Western Antarctic ice sheets which are accelerating their melt rates.

Maybe SE Asia will pump out enough S02 to slow it down. :rolleyes:
 
Geez Alec talk about overdoing it and being misleading.

First of all, don't insult me showing me the basic role of methane and its sources. You know quite well what I know and what I intended to point -your use as hype of what you catch out there in the fringes of real science-.

If you examined your own material and quotations with a minimal critical eye I wouldn't be here pointing the endless chain of your inattentions. The "methane gun" is just a working hypothesis and you took it to gallop on your favourite hype.

Currently we have a level of atmospheric methane of 1800 ppbv that translates in a radiative forcing of about 0.45 W/m2 which is some 15 to 20% of all radiative forcing previous the offset of roughly 40% of it caused by aerosols. So methane is there and will keep its role while those supposed 3°C more are achieved and it will help the release of your yellow "35 and 94 Gt C of methane" which being so variable as it is "could add up to an additional 0.5°C of global warming", not "from X to Y?", specially taking into account that the "gun" is in the very feedback? How much CO2 equivalent is it that? from 700 to 2000GT (3000GT is the content of CO2 now in all the atmosphere, that means a catastrophic shift which translates in ...just 0.5°C?). All those number sound wrong. The content of methane in all the atmosphere is about 5.2 GT right now with the forcing effect already explained. Now, every year 0.55GT is added and about 0.5 is oxidized into CO2 and water. Now, what is a GT C? could you say for sure if it is C02 equivalent? In that case that means 3 to 9 GT of methane, that is 6 to 18 years, at most, of the current level of emissions. All of it in a period with temperatures climbing 3°? all of it when we know that methane has a mean life of at most 12 years. It sounds awfully wrong in the other extreme too.

That is linked to an article containing the following bit "The methane hydrate deposits are estimated at between 1,000 and 10,000 Gigatons (109 tons) of CO₂-equivalents as methane". Again, it's roughly 50 to 500GT of methane. Could they release 35 to 94 GT? How much volume of fire ice are we talking: at least 300 to 3000 GT, tho';) the average concentration in the permafrost is indeed much lower. So, maybe 2,000 to 100,000 GT (the maximum Arctic sea ice volume were some 22,000 GT in the good ole times). This ice is part of the sediments, so the sediments are even a large volume, lets say 10,000 to 1,000,000 GT, That divided by the surface of the whole Arctic give us a thickness of 0.5 to 50m to be melted permanently. The lower value or more sounds reasonable, but that sensible part in the permafrost is know to have just 0.5 to 1% methane, so ...

All the figures tremble.

Summary:

I criticized your bad choice of articles as a part of a hype.
You provided explanations on the whole subject (unnecessary, unsolicited, marginally related to the specific subject)
About the specific subject, you linked articles you didn't care to check by yourself.
By now it looks like you and a 2-buck calculator to check your facts would be a miracle.

I'm asking you in the most clear manner that you cease doing exactly what denialists do: selecting material in an uncritical manner just because it satisfies some internal need of yourself, doing this on a regular basis and doing this almost exclusively when a denialist is not stirring the waters here, and doing this with the intention of promoting the notion of a global bleak future just around the corner (I suppose all done with the intention of pressing other people to take action -action that you wouldn't care in propose in the format of practical methods-)
 
"both" kinds? Could you please point me to where these are explained?

What is this graph really showing us?

In a rush:

Kind 1 --->the one in each family of scenarios (equi-plausible scenarios by design) among six families (different scenarios) ---> what the future be (more the 'conceptual' kind)
Kind 2 --->for each family, the likely range of surface temperatures (more the 'mathematical' kind)

If you want to follow this line it's OK with me but, please, wait until I have answered several previous posts and lines of reasoning.
 
First of all, don't insult me showing me the basic role of methane and its sources. You know quite well what I know and what I intended to point -your use as hype of what you catch out there in the fringes of real science-.

horsepucky
- you insult me and the authors by claiming hype on an article that was a demonstration of the discovery of a useful gauge for changes in methane emissions from a clathrate source under warming conditions.
You got rightly called on it in detail.
The come back is for those that might think your dismissal of methane as a threat had any merit - it doesn't.

Maybe you better re-read the article
Published in Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/gas-hydrates-in-arctic-are-shallowest-yet-found-1.11988

by a senior working scientist
Charles Paull, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, who presented the work on Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California1.
neither the article nor it's conclusion could in any way be considered fringe science. Why don't you email your critique to him.

You are still in throes of trying to defend an indefensibly low assessment of 500 ppm at some .8C figure above where we are now and that simply will not fly for any of the reasons you postulate yet you avoid discussing the one reason it might which is S02 et al.
All the dodging just serves that wrong headed guess. Pity the casual user trying to interpret your hodge podge as above.

I laid out the methane article response to your rant for THOSE users you are confusing and to counter your dismissal of the first article as hype.
Am I pissed Alec? - yep - for whatever it's worth.

You know very well there are much wilder "threat articles" out there that ARE on the fringe.
That article on the shallow clathrates in no way falls into that category and you know that. It was just a puerile exercise on your part in picking something apart for the wrong reason.

The article rightly warned against taking too seriously over the top "events" such as a massive methane spike which while possible is unlikely. The take away is that methane is both a threat and an opportunity.
If the world can curb it then it has a greater immediate affect than curbing C02 on the same scale.

Move on. :rolleyes:

More fringe science here

Seismic signs of escaping methane under the sea
A changing Gulf Stream is warming deep waters along the eastern United States and destabilizing greenhouse gases trapped in sediments.

Virginia Gewin
25 October 2012

http://www.nature.com/news/seismic-signs-of-escaping-methane-under-the-sea-1.11652
 
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horsepucky
- you insult me and the authors by claiming hype on an article that was a demonstration of the discovery of a useful gauge for changes in methane emissions from a clathrate source under warming conditions.
You got rightly called on it in detail.
The come back is for those that might think your dismissal of methane as a threat had any merit - it doesn't.

The article has only one author: a journalist.

You are still in throes of trying to defend an indefensibly low assessment of 500 ppm at some .8C figure above where we are now and that simply will not fly for any of the reasons you postulate yet you avoid discussing the one reason it might which is S02 et al.
All the dodging just serves that wrong headed guess. Pity the casual user trying to interpret your hodge podge as above.

I'm trying to get to it since I started the set of posts including questions and maps. I was trying to follow that up but I'm constantly loosing time trying to neutralize calls to despair in the form of tertiary papers and press hype. Do you think that I believe I got to the "truth" and everyone else is an idiot? The only truth is that denialists and warmers in state of hype share the same methods of selecting what confirms their hedonistic needs so there's a sea of information out there that is not much visible. I've already told about this for a very good reason.

I laid out the methane article response to your rant for THOSE users you are confusing and to counter your dismissal of the first article as hype.
Am I pissed Alec? - yep - for whatever it's worth.

You know very well there are much wilder "threat articles" out there that ARE on the fringe.
That article on the shallow clathrates in no way falls into that category and you know that. It was just a puerile exercise on your part in picking something apart for the wrong reason.

The article rightly warned against taking too seriously over the top "events" such as a massive methane spike which while possible is unlikely. The take away is that methane is both a threat and an opportunity.
If the world can curb it then it has a greater immediate affect than curbing C02 on the same scale.

Move on. :rolleyes:

There's nothing legitimate in a "what if clathrates are massively released" kind of hype, even when suggested to add a pinch of pepper to the article. In the worst reasonable scenario ever -not science fiction- clathrates will be the third cause of pain after China and USA.

It's paramount to fight from these pages against the use of those worst case scenarios of a planet without human presence having a sudden eruption of methane applied to our actual situation. The same speculations that put up to 1,000 GT of methane close to the surface (5 times the reserves of natural gas, confirmed plus reasonably estimated) fail to perceive that such gas equals more than a century of human energy consumption (from coal to spaghetti, including gas, oil, alcohol, wood and cake with frosting) at present levels, and that it has a commercial valuation of 60 months of world's gross product. In that situation somebody had soon found a way to extract at least part of it.

What we have to do is promoting common sense, reality check and basic facts knowledge, and not fantasize about a lot of potential positive feedbacks known and unknown contributing to everybody doing nothing about what really is here.

If one of the models you fancy to cite predicts +6°C by 2100, believe me, clathrates are already modelled there. There's no need to add one thing to the other (by not saying "what would be consistent with that model predicting" you are promoting both things to be considered independent and addable)
 
You are still in throes of trying to defend an indefensibly low assessment of 500 ppm at some .8C figure above where we are now and that simply will not fly for any of the reasons you postulate yet you avoid discussing the one reason it might which is S02 et al.
All the dodging just serves that wrong headed guess. Pity the casual user trying to interpret your hodge podge as above.

For you and others to play while I reach this point:

picture.php


picture.php
 
Following the series of questions that began with this figure:

picture.php


We have now a partial explanation about the reason deep ocean waters are colder than the average temperature of the planet.

We have yet to answer the second question:

The second one is not so easy and points towards the "where's the heat?" question: Why on Earth can be this layer at 6°C at the Equator and be more than 10°C near Ireland or the English Channel? How can you explain this feature? Is there another noticeable feature you see on the image above?

About the bit "Why on Earth can be this layer at 6°C at the Equator and be more than 10°C near Ireland or the English Channel?" we may use a multiple choice:

a) Because thermometers are not reliable
b) Because there's an international conspiracy to feign AGW and do business.
c) Because there's a climate-related subsystem I should know.
d) Because the dinosaur-killing meteorite fallen in Yucatan coming from SW indeed did skipping and there are still remains of its heat.

Any ideas?
You may find some hints if you compare that with this map:

picture.php


In exchange of that, a third question:

Is there some noticeable feature -especially in the first figure- that call your attention? I mean something with planetary consequences.

Remember, all this goes to explain why hasn't warmed the planet as expected in recent years, why are warmings of 5 or even 8°C at the end of the century dead wrong and just hype, and more ...
 
A little about models involved in recent (and future) discussions in this thread:

HadCM3 (very important in IPCC 3rd assessment)

One of the first coupled
models capable of
producing a stable surface
climate without the use of
‘flux adjustments’.

New level of realism
opened up a wide range of
studies that were not
previously accessible to
AOGCMs – e.g. MOC.

(Wood et al. Nature 1999)
Some modern variations of it have been used in the paper provided by bobwtfomg showing these future projections for scenario A1F1:

picture.php


(orange lines represent ensemble members projecting +4°C over pre-industrial temperatures by 2090 or earlier).
 
More about models involved in recent (and future) discussions in this thread:

HadGEM1 (very important in IPCC 4th assessment)

New atmospheric dynamical
core and substantially new
parametrisations

New level of cloud
simulation opened up more
process-based approach to
analysing and constraining
cloud feedbacks on climate
sensitivity

(Williams et al. Clim. Dyn. 2006)
Temperature projections (from Stott, Jones, Lowe et al)

picture.php


This is for A1B.
 
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