Take care of Earth

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as
shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by
mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the
  next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report
  today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may
  stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat
  around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect
  may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping
  greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research
  scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental
  and weather-related services.

``Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming
  trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. ``Without knowing
  that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''

The Leibniz study, co-written by Noel Keenlyside, a research scientist at the
  institute, will be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.

``If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that
  greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,'' Keenlyside said in an interview. ``There
  can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''

CO2 Surge

Carbon dioxide, produced mainly from burning fossil fuels such as oil and natural
  gas, is the chief pollutant blamed for global warming. Since 1988, CO2 levels
  in the world's skies have increased by 9.8 percent, according to the U.S. National
  Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Scientists debate how much carbon can be pumped into the atmosphere before
  the effects of climate change, including droughts, floods and reduced fresh
  water supplies, become irreversible. For every 1 million molecules in the atmosphere,
  about 384 are carbon dioxide, according to NOAA.

Global temperatures can't rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)
  without risking the worst effects of climate change, according to the European
  Union. A scenario to stay below that limit suggests that CO2 levels must be
  stabilized between 350 and to 400 parts per million.

Long-term climate changes in the North Atlantic region affect ``hurricane activity
  in the Atlantic, and surface temperature and rainfall variations over North
  America, Europe and northern Africa,'' according to the study.

`Cold Direction'

``Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,''
  Wood said. ``If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will
  win.''

The world will become at least 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, compared
  with the pre-industrial period, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental
  Panel on Climate Change, said in March.

``We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don't want it to
  be turned around in the wrong way,'' Keenlyside said. ``I hope it doesn't become
  a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.''

Exxon Mobil Corp. spokesman Gantt Walton said managers of U.S. oil company
  ``take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action,''
  in an interview today