Carbon emissions may be immaterial to global warming in future

Washington, April 28 : While climate change and carbon emissions are considered to be strongly associated, a new study report suggests that this relationship will perhaps no longer persist in the future.

The report published in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management, however, makes it clear that it may be some time before this saturation point is reached.

Russian researchers Igor Mokhov and Alexey Eliseev, from the Moscow-based A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics RAS, say that the link between the carbon cycle and human effects caused by emissions, energy use, and agriculature may only be relevant for the next 'several centuries'.

The researchers studied how feedback between our climate and the carbon cycle changes over time, by using a climate model called 'IAP RAS CM'.

They began their study with the assumption that fossil fuel emissions would grow exponentially with a characteristic timescale from 50 to 250 years.

The researcher duo found that climate-carbon cycle feedback grows initially and peaks, and then eventually decreases to a point where it ceases.

While writing the study report, they said that the peak would be reached much later if we succeed in slowing down the rate of emissions.

They, however, also wrote that a steep rise in emissions would bring the peak in coupling between climate and carbon emissions even closer.

According to them, we are heading inexorably towards the saturation peak, irrespective of how quickly we get there.

"Even weak but continuing emissions lead to eventual saturation of the climate-carbon cycle feedback," the authors said.

ANI