Word: warmer
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Back in the Pliocene era, between 5 million and 3 million years ago, the average global temperature was about 7°F warmer than it is today, yet atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were about the same. If carbon dioxide were the sole factor in warming, that wouldn't make any sense. It isn't, of course; there are several other contributors, including the brightness of the sun and the location of the continents (whose positions dictate, among other things, where ice caps can form) - but these were all pretty much the same in the Pliocene as well...
...modern world, El Niño is a change in wind patterns and ocean currents that occurs every few years, bringing warmer water to the normally cool eastern Pacific; the result is major changes in storms and other weather effects, along with a temporary spike in global temperature. El Niño happened in 1998, for example, so if you were to take that year as a starting point for tracking global temperatures, you'd find that the following decade didn't see a lot of warming by comparison. (This is the origin of the myth that global warming...
...while El Niño alone couldn't create long-lasting warming - since it's really just a rearrangement of the ocean's heat, not an overall increase - it could trigger an environmental feedback cycle that could. When you make the tropics warmer, "you also get more evaporation, so there's more water vapor in the atmosphere, which is a strong greenhouse gas," says Fedorov. So intense hurricanes can create conditions that warm the planet overall, leading to even more intense hurricanes, leading to more water vapor, and so on - a loop that could plausibly help explain the Pliocene...
...States' behavior constitutes a serious interference in China's internal affairs and seriously hurts the feelings of the Chinese people and seriously harms Sino-U.S. relations." The comments are in line with what Chinese diplomats have said after the Dalai Lama met U.S. leaders in the past, during warmer times between the two nations. Part of Beijing's restraint this week may be due to the fact that the meeting came during the Chinese New Year, the country's biggest holiday, when most officials are on leave. But after China allowed a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to visit Hong...
...other words, it could mean the world's seas will rise even more quickly than we expect - bad news for those who think there's plenty of time to adapt to a warmer world...