![]() Oil rigs in the Prudhoe Bay Oil Fields in Deadhorse, Alaska, US. From 2007, more than 400 oil and gas fields have been developed north of the Arctic circle, while in Antarctica, fossil fuel extraction is banned. One reason for the difference may be that fossil fuels are extracted in the Arctic, but not in the Antarctic. In Antarctica, however, the increase is just 0.1☌, despite similar levels of atmospheric CO 2 in both polar regions. One of the fastest rates of warming has been observed in the Arctic, where temperatures have risen by 0.6☌ every decade since 1978. These places, which included Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and Alaska, reported high rates of warming-between three and six times higher than the average rate worldwide. We looked at warming trends in oil and gas producing regions across the world. This means more heat from the Earth's interior can be conducted to the surface, causing the land and the ocean to warm. When oil and gas is extracted, the voids fill with water, which is a less effective insulator. Our research suggests that it is possible that temperatures may be rising faster in places where fossil fuels are being extracted from the ground.īetween 20, 45.5 billion tonnes of oil and 36.3 billion cubic metres of natural gas were removed from the Earth's crust. To investigate this theory in the Earth's crust, we looked at the figures for global fossil fuel production alongside data for temperature changes on the land and sea surface. This idea is similar to how fat tissue under the skin prevents body heat from being lost to the surrounding air. As these deposits have been emptied by fossil fuel extraction, more of that heat could be reaching the surface. They argued that fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas in layers and crevices beneath the Earth's surface act as an insulating blanket, trapping heat from the planet's interior. A few years later, two Chinese scientists suggested that heat from the earth's interior could be contributing to rising temperatures. ![]() Nuclear tests and volcanic eruptions are some examples of other large heat sources.īack in 2009, two scientists in Sweden argued that thermal emissions were more important than CO 2 for raising global temperatures. Burning fossil fuels doesn't just produce greenhouse gases, it also generates a lot of heat, which leaks out to the atmosphere. His attention turned instead to the role of thermal emissions. ![]() Is this solely down to emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO 2? Meteorologist Hubert Lamb, regarded as the father of modern climatology, argued that CO 2 levels alone couldn't account for all of the global warming that's been observed. The world is now 1☌ warmer than it was in pre-industrial times. ![]()
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