Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide – A Flashback into the Past and an Outlook into the Future

Authors

Dr. U. Berner, Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, Hannover

Year

2006

Print Info

Fortschritt-Berichte VDI, Reihe 12, Nr. 622

Summary

The flashback into the climatic past illustrates that the climate system was subjected to large fluctuations as “climate” is not a constant. Drivers of these past fluctuations were natural factors like – for example – variations of solar energy, among others, as changes in solar activity are known since long to correlate well with the variability of climate. However, climate effective trace gases like carbon dioxide have contributed significantly to the climate system of the past, but were not the trigger of climatic changes. Also, with respect to modern climate, only the interplay of several forces (sun, natural and anthropogenic aerosols, climate effective trace gases) can explain the observed changes. Emission and climate scenarios enable an outlook into the future of climate and aid to investigate climatic changes which might occur under certain prerequisites. Variations of natural climate drivers are as a rule excluded from these investigations, as they are hardly predictable. Estimates of possible economic and ecologic scenarios allow evaluating the bandwidth of future climate constellations to some extend. In this context, results of climate modelling suggest that even costintensive emission reductions of the Kyoto Protocol will not have any significant influence on climate.

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