One of the most dangerous aspects of climate change is its potential to produce feedbacks, or events in which warming causes changes that drive higher temperatures. Most of it is natural, such as warm oceans that can store less carbon dioxide, which causes more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. But only one possible comment has a human element: the air conditioner.
Most of the carbon dioxide we emit comes from electricity generation. The heat it produces causes people to run air conditioners more often, which leads to more electricity being used, which results in more air pollution. It’s an idea that will remain dangerous until we can green the electric grid.
A new report released this week looks at their views on our climate change plans, and assesses how much greenhouse gas emissions can be used in the world to meet our goal of keeping the temperature below 2°C, and compares it to the one we reach. our primary goal reducing the temperature by 1.5 ° C. The answer is that it makes a big difference, but the effect is not spread evenly between countries.
Absolute and relative unpleasantness
There is no set amount of time the air conditioner should be on. People have different temperature tolerances, and most people don’t have access to air. But studies in this area often use a measure called cooling degree days. This usually uses the outdoor temperature at which things like office buildings or shopping malls begin to use air conditioners—usually around 18°C (65°F). For each day that is warmer than desired, the cooling degree days are multiplied by the number of degrees that the desired level is exceeded.
Therefore, if you set a base of 18° C and have a day of 25° C, then it is registered as another seven degree days of cold. Therefore, the number is not only necessary to turn on the cooling equipment, but it gives information about how difficult the equipment will be.
In this new project, a team from the UK used weather models to run it as a distributed computing project Climateprediction.net. For these two regions (+1.5 and +2.0 °C), 700 cycles were performed, and the same temperature in each grid of the world map was calculated. The results, were also used to calculate the cold degree days for the two events.
The researchers then conducted two simulations. One was the absolute difference between the 1.5° and 2.0° states, the total number of extra cold days added to the extra warming. You can think of this as an omen of trouble, registering how things will get worse at a given location.
The second dimension can be thought of as a planning process, as it deals with the size of the relative change. Therefore, places that do not have days of cold degrees in the country of 1.5 ° can have a big difference if they suddenly experience additional heat. And, since those degree days were rare to begin with, those countries probably don’t have the air conditioning equipment (or the team to control it) to handle the unprecedented pressures.