Powerful Italian quake kills many

t least 27 people have been killed in a powerful earthquake that struck central Italy, Italian officials say.

Five children are said to be among the dead and at least 30 people remain unaccounted for as a massive search for the trapped is under way.

The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at 0330 (0130 GMT) close to L'Aquila city, 95km (60 miles) north-east of Rome.

A civil protection official said 3,000 to 10,000 buildings in the medieval city may have been damaged.

"This means that the we'll have several thousand people to assist over the next few weeks and months," Agostino Miozzo told Sky Italia.

"Our goal is to give shelter to all by tonight."

State of emergency

Earlier, the mayor of L'Aquila, Massimo Cialente, said some 100,000 people had left their homes.

Latest from Duncan Kennedy, L'Aquila Here in the centre of L'Aquila emergency services are frantically trying to get to grips with this earthquake that has devastated parts of this town. There must be about 30 or 40 emergency service people using their hands trying to get the rubble away to try to get to people trapped inside the building. One of the rescue workers told me there are people trapped inside this building but at the moment there's no heavy lifting gear in place to try and lift off the heavy slabs of concrete. Eyewitness: Italy earthquake In pictures: Italy earthquake

A university dormitory, churches and a bell tower are believed to be among the buildings that had collapsed.

Residents and rescuers were using their bare hands to clear the debris from collapsed buildings. There were calls for quiet as they listened for signs of life amid the rubble.

Survivors, some still in their night clothes, hugged each other as they waited for news of friends and relatives.

Hundreds waited for treatment at the city's main hospital, where doctors were forced to treat people in the open air because only one operating room was functioning, Italian news agency Ansa reports.

The death toll has been rising steadily throughout the morning. The latest from Ansa is that 27 people are now dead.

But with many villages in the surrounding area still cut off by landslides, it is thought the full scale of the disaster will not become clear for many hours.

MAJOR ITALIAN QUAKES 2002 - 30 die, including 27 pupils and their teacher, in the southern town of San Giuliano di Puglia 1997 - 13 die and priceless cultural heritage lost in the central Umbria region 1980 - Nearly 3,000 people die, some 9,000 injured and 30,000 displaced near Naples

Phone and power lines remain down, and some bridges and roads have been closed as a precaution as the region was hit by a series of aftershocks.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency, and is reported to have cancelled a visit to Moscow to travel to the quake-hit area.

Panic

The earthquake happened hours after a 4.6-magnitude tremor shook the area but caused no reported damage.

Thousands of the city's 70,000 residents ran into the streets in panic during the 30 second tremor.

L'AQUILA Medieval city, founded in the 13th Century Capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region Population 70,000, with many thousands more tourists and foreign students Walled city with narrow streets, lined by Baroque and Renaissance buildings

"We left as soon as we felt the first tremors," said Antonio D'Ostilio, 22, as he stood on a street in L'Aquila with a suitcase of clothes hastily piled together.

"We woke up all of a sudden and we immediately ran downstairs in our pyjamas," he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.

A student dormitory was said to be one of the buildings badly damaged. Rescuers were reportedly searching the rubble for people feared trapped inside.

One student told Rai state TV that he managed to escape the building before the roof collapsed.

Public safety chief Guido Bertolaso warned of "numerous victims, many injured and so many collapsed homes" as he travelled to the scene, Ansa news agency reported.

Correspondents say that L'Aquila, capital of the mountainous Abruzzo region, has many old buildings not built to withstand a strong earthquake.

Even some modern structures on the outskirts of the city were reported to have collapsed.

The earthquake was also felt in Rome, where the BBC correspondent said he was woken up by the shaking.

Italy lies on two fault lines and has been hit by powerful earthquakes in the past, mainly in the south of the country.

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Global warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and the oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the 100 years ending in 2005.^[1][A] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century, and that natural phenomena such as solar variation and volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect afterward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science,^[B] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.

Climate model projections summarized in the latest IPCC report indicate that global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century. The uncertainty in this estimate arises from the use of models with differing climate sensitivity, and the use of differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions. Some other uncertainties include how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming is expected to continue beyond 2100 (even if emissions stop) because of the large heat capacity of the oceans and the lifespan of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Increasing global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely including an expanse of the subtropical desert regions. Other likely effects include Arctic shrinkage and resulting Arctic methane release, shrinkage of Amazon rainforest and Boreal forests, increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, changes in agricultural yields, modifications of trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and changes in the ranges of disease vectors.

Political and public debate continues regarding the appropriate response to global warming. The available options are mitigation to reduce further emissions; adaptation to reduce the damage caused by warming; and, more speculatively, geoengineering to reverse global warming. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A successor to the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol is expected to be agreed at the COP15 talks in December 2009.

Global mean surface temperature anomaly relative to 1961–1990

Mean surface temperature anomalies during the period 1999 to 2008 with respect to the average temperatures from 1940 to 1980

Forcing

The Earth's climate changes in response to external forcings, including those related to greenhouse gases, variations in its orbit around the Sun (orbital forcing),^[9][10][11] changes in solar luminosity, and volcanic eruptions. There are also positive and negative feedbacks which determine how the climate will respond to external forcing.

None of the effects of forcing are instantaneous. The thermal inertia of the Earth's oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that the Earth's current climate is not in equilibrium with the forcing imposed. Climate commitment studies indicate that even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) would still occur.

Global dimming, the gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface, may have partially mitigated global warming in the late 20th century. From 1960 to 1990 human-caused aerosols likely precipitated this effect. Scientists have stated with 66–90% confidence that the effects of human-caused aerosols, along with volcanic activity, have offset some of the global warming, and that greenhouse gases would have resulted in more warming than observed if not for these dimming agents.

Ozone depletion, the steady decline in the total amount of ozone in Earth's stratosphere, is frequently cited in relation to global warming. Although there are areas of linkage, the relationship between the two is not strong.

Greenhouse effect

Main articles: Greenhouse gas and Greenhouse effect

The causes of the recent warming are an active field of research. The scientific consensus^[14][15] is that the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activity has caused most of the warming observed since the start of the industrial era, and the observed warming cannot be satisfactorily explained by natural causes alone. This attribution is clearest for the most recent 50 years, which is the period when most of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations took place and for which the most complete measurements exist.

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases warm a planet's lower atmosphere and surface. Existence of the greenhouse effect as such is not disputed even by those who do not agree that the recent temperature increase is attributable to human activity. The question is instead how the strength of the greenhouse effect changes when human activity increases the atmospheric concentrations of particular greenhouse gases.

Recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). The monthly CO₂ measurements display small seasonal oscillations in an overall yearly uptrend; each year's maximum is reached during the Northern Hemisphere's late spring, and declines during the Northern Hemisphere growing season as plants remove some CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F), without which Earth would be uninhabitable. On Earth the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70 percent of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO₂), which causes 9–26 percent; methane (CH₄), which causes 4–9 percent; and ozone, which causes 3–7 percent.

Human activity since the industrial revolution has increased the atmospheric concentration of various greenhouse gases, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO₂, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. The atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since the mid-1700s. These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores.Less direct geological evidence indicates that CO₂ values this high were last seen approximately 20 million years ago. Fossil fuel burning has produced approximately three-quarters of the increase in CO₂ from human activity over the past 20 years. Most of the rest is due to land-use change, in particular deforestation.

CO₂ concentrations are expected to continue to rise due to ongoing burning of fossil fuels and land-use change. The rate of rise will depend on uncertain economic, sociological, technological, and natural developments. The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios gives a wide range of future CO₂ scenarios, ranging from 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100. Fossil fuel reserves are sufficient to reach this level and continue emissions past 2100 if coal, tar sands or methane clathrates are extensively exploited.

Solar variation

Main article: Solar variation

An alternative hypothesis is that recent warming may be the result of variations in solar activity. A paper by Peter Stott and colleagues suggests that climate models overestimate the relative effect of greenhouse gases compared to solar forcing; they also suggest that the cooling effects of volcanic dust and sulfate aerosols have been underestimated.They nevertheless conclude that even with an enhanced climate sensitivity to solar forcing, most of the warming since the mid-20th century is likely attributable to the increases in greenhouse gases. Another paper suggests that the Sun may have contributed about 45–50 percent of the increase in the average global surface temperature over the period 1900–2000, and about 25–35 percent between 1980 and 2000. In 2006, Peter Foukal and colleagues found no net increase of solar brightness over the last 1,000 years. Solar cycles led to a small increase of 0.07 percent in brightness over the last 30 years. This effect is too small to contribute significantly to global warming. The general view is that the combined effect of the two main sources of natural climate forcing, solar variation and changes in volcanic activity, probably had a warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 but a cooling effect since.

Solar variation over the last thirty years.

One predicted effect of an increase in solar activity would be a warming of most of the stratosphere, whereas an increase in greenhouse gases should produce cooling there. The observed trend since at least 1960 has been a cooling of the lower stratosphere. Reduction of stratospheric ozone also has a cooling influence, but substantial ozone depletion did not occur until the late 1970s.

Another hypothesis related to solar activity is that magnetic activity of the sun deflects cosmic rays that may influence the generation of cloud condensation nuclei and thereby affect the climate. Another paper found no relation between global warming and solar radiation since 1985, whether through variations in solar output or variations in cosmic rays. Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen, the main proponents of cloud seeding by galactic cosmic rays, disputed this criticism of their hypothesis. A 2007 paper found that in the last 20 years there has been no significant link between changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth and cloudiness and temperature.

Feedback

When a warming trend results in effects that induce further warming, the process is referred to as a positive feedback; when the effects induce cooling, the process is referred to as a negative feedback. The primary positive feedback involves water vapor. The primary negative feedback is the effect of temperature on emission of infrared radiation: as the temperature of a body increases, the emitted radiation increases with the fourth power of its absolute temperature. This provides a powerful negative feedback which stabilizes the climate system over time.

Water vapor feedback

One of the most pronounced positive feedback effects relates to the evaporation of water. If the atmosphere is warmed, the saturation vapour pressure increases, and the quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere will tend to increase. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the increase in water vapor content makes the atmosphere warm further; this warming causes the atmosphere to hold still more water vapor (a positive feedback), and so on until other processes stop the feedback loop. The result is a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO₂ alone. Although this feedback process causes an increase in the absolute moisture content of the air, the relative humidity stays nearly constant or even decreases slightly because the air is warmer.

Clouds

Feedback effects due to clouds are an area of ongoing research. Seen from below, clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect; seen from above, clouds reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. Whether the net effect is warming or cooling depends on details such as the type and altitude of the cloud, details that have been difficult to represent in climate models.

Lapse rate

A subtler feedback process relates to changes in the lapse rate as the atmosphere warms. The atmosphere's temperature decreases with height in the troposphere. Since emission of infrared radiation varies with the fourth power of temperature, longwave radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere is less than that emitted from the lower atmosphere. Most of the radiation emitted from the upper atmosphere escapes to space, while most of the radiation emitted from the lower atmosphere is re-absorbed by the surface or the atmosphere. Thus, the strength of the greenhouse effect depends on the atmosphere's rate of temperature decrease with height: if the rate of temperature decrease is greater the greenhouse effect will be stronger, and if the rate of temperature decrease is smaller then the greenhouse effect will be weaker. Both theory and climate models indicate that with increased greenhouse gas content the rate of temperature decrease with height will be reduced, producing a negative lapse rate feedback that weakens the greenhouse effect. Measurements of the rate of temperature change with height are very sensitive to small errors in observations, making it difficult to establish whether the models agree with observations.

Aerial photograph showing a section of sea ice. The lighter blue areas are melt ponds and the darkest areas are open water, both have a lower albedo than the white sea ice. The melting ice contributes to the ice-albedo feedback.

Ice-albedo

Another important feedback process is ice-albedo feedback.^[45] When global temperatures increase, ice near the poles melts at an increasing rate. As the ice melts, land or open water takes its place. Both land and open water are on average less reflective than ice, and thus absorb more solar radiation. This causes more warming, which in turn causes more melting, and this cycle continues. Rapid Arctic shrinkage is already occurring, with 2007 being the lowest ever recorded sea ice area. Some models suggest that tipping points exist, leading to a potentially rapid collapse of sea ice cover in the Arctic.

Arctic methane release

Warming is also the triggering variable for the release of methane from sources both on land and on the deep ocean floor, making both of these possible feedback effects. Thawing permafrost, such as the frozen peat bogs in Siberia, creates a positive feedback due to the potentially rapid release of CO₂ and CH₄. Methane discharge from permafrost is presently under intensive study.

Clathrate gun hypothesis

Warmer deep ocean temperatures could also release the greenhouse gas methane from the 'frozen' state of the vast deep ocean deposits of methane clathrate, according to the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis, albeit over millenial time-scales. A further release of methane from shallow cold water clathrates is also expected, and is predicted to be faster. Buffett and Archer predict a large release of methane in response to warming, and a large increase in methane stores if oxygen levels in the ocean fall. They offer a "global estimate of 3×10¹⁸ g of carbon (3000 Gton C) in clathrate and 2×10¹⁸ g (2000 Gton C) in methane bubbles. The predicted methane inventory decreases by 85% in response to 3 °C of warming. Conversely, the methane inventory increases by a factor of 2 if the O2 concentration of the deep ocean decreases by 40 μM or carbon rain increases by 50%

Sequestration

Ocean ecosystems' ability to sequester carbon are expected to decline as it warms. This is because the resulting low nutrient levels of the mesopelagic zone (about 200 to 1000 m depth) limits the growth of diatoms in favor of smaller phytoplankton that are poorer biological pumps of carbon.

Recent

Two millennia of mean surface temperatures according to different reconstructions, each smoothed on a decadal scale. The unsmoothed, annual value for 2004 is also plotted for reference.

Global temperatures have increased by 0.75 °C (1.35 °F) relative to the period 1860–1900, according to the instrumental temperature record. This measured temperature increase is not significantly affected by the urban heat island effect. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C per decade against 0.13 °C per decade). Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.12 and 0.22 °C (0.22 and 0.4 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. Temperature is believed to have been relatively stable over the one or two thousand years before 1850, with possibly regional fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.

Ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean can lose heat by evaporation more readily than the land. The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere, so it warms faster. The Northern Hemisphere also has extensive areas of seasonal snow and sea-ice cover subject to the ice-albedo feedback. More greenhouse gases are emitted in the Northern than Southern Hemisphere, but this does not contribute to the difference in warming because the major greenhouse gases persist long enough to mix between hemispheres.

Based on estimates by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2005 was the warmest year since reliable, widespread instrumental measurements became available in the late 1800s, exceeding the previous record set in 1998 by a few hundredths of a degree. Estimates prepared by the World Meteorological Organization and the Climatic Research Unit concluded that 2005 was the second warmest year, behind 1998. Temperatures in 1998 were unusually warm because the strongest El Niño-Southern Oscillation in the past century occurred during that year.

Anthropogenic emissions of other pollutants—notably sulfate aerosols—can exert a cooling effect by increasing the reflection of incoming sunlight. This partially accounts for the cooling seen in the temperature record in the middle of the twentieth century, though the cooling may also be due in part to natural variability. James Hansen and colleagues have proposed that the effects of the products of fossil fuel combustion—CO₂ and aerosols—have, for the short term, largely offset one another, so that net warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO₂ greenhouse gases.

Paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman has argued that human influence on the global climate began around 8,000 years ago with the start of forest clearing to provide land for agriculture and 5,000 years ago with the start of Asian rice irrigation. Ruddiman's interpretation of the historical record, with respect to the methane data, has been disputed.

Pre-human climate variations

Further information: Paleoclimatology

See also: Snowball Earth and Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum

Curves of reconstructed temperature at two locations in Antarctica and a global record of variations in glacial ice volume. Today's date is on the left side of the graph.

Earth has experienced warming and cooling many times in the past. The recent Antarctic EPICA ice core spans 800,000 years, including eight glacial cycles timed by orbital variations with interglacial warm periods comparable to present temperatures.

A rapid buildup of greenhouse gases amplified warming in the early Jurassic period (about 180 million years ago), with average temperatures rising by 5 °C (9 °F). Research by the Open University indicates that the warming caused the rate of rock weathering to increase by 400%. As such weathering locks away carbon in calcite and dolomite, CO₂ levels dropped back to normal over roughly the next 150,000 years.

Sudden releases of methane from clathrate compounds (the clathrate gun hypothesis) have been hypothesized as both a cause for and an effect of other warming events in the distant past, including the Permian–Triassic extinction event (about 251 million years ago) and the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 55 million years ago).

Climate models

The main tool for projecting future climate changes are computer models of the climate. These models are based on physical principles including fluid dynamics and radiative transfer. Although they attempt to include as many processes as possible, simplifications of the actual climate system are inevitable because of the constraints of available computer power and limitations in knowledge of the climate system. All modern climate models include an atmospheric model that is coupled to an ocean model and models for ice cover on land and sea. Some models also include treatments of chemical and biological processes. These models project a warmer climate due to increasing levels of greenhouse gases. Although much of the variation in model outcomes depends on the greenhouse gas emissions used as inputs, the temperature effect of a specific greenhouse gas concentration (climate sensitivity) varies depending on the model used. The representation of clouds is one of the main sources of uncertainty in present-generation models, though progress is being made on this problem.

Global climate model projections of future climate depend on estimates of greenhouse gas emissions, most often those from the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES). In addition to human-caused emissions, some models also include a simulation of the carbon cycle; this generally shows a positive feedback, though this response is uncertain. Some observational studies also show a positive feedback.

Including uncertainties in future greenhouse gas concentrations and climate sensitivity, the IPCC anticipates a warming of 1.1 °C to 6.4 °C (2.0 °F to 11.5 °F) by the end of the 21st century, relative to 1980–1999. A 2008 paper predicts that the global temperature will not increase during the next decade because of short-term natural climate cycles.

Models are also used to help investigate the causes of recent climate change by comparing the observed changes to those that the models project from various natural and human-derived causes. Although these models do not unambiguously attribute the warming that occurred from approximately 1910 to 1945 to either natural variation or human effects, they do indicate that the warming since 1975 is dominated by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Current climate models produce a good match to observations of global temperature changes over the last century, but do not simulate all aspects of climate. The physical realism of models is tested by examining their ability to simulate current or past climates. While a 2007 study by David Douglass and colleagues found that the models did not accurately predict observed changes in the tropical troposphere, a 2008 paper published by a 17-member team led by Ben Santer noted errors in the Douglass study, and found instead that the models and observations were not statistically different. Not all effects of global warming are accurately predicted by the climate models used by the IPCC. For example, observed Arctic shrinkage has been faster than that predicted.

Attributed and expected effects

lthough it is difficult to connect specific weather events to global warming, an increase in global temperatures may in turn cause broader changes, including glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and worldwide sea level rise. Changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation may result in flooding and drought. There may also be changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. These changes are not likely to be reversible on timescales shorter than a thousand years. Other effects may include changes in agricultural yields, addition of new trade routes, reduced summer streamflows, species extinctions, and increases in the range of disease vectors.

Some effects on both the natural environment and human life are, at least in part, already being attributed to global warming. A 2001 report by the IPCC suggests that glacier retreat, ice shelf disruption such as that of the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, and increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are attributable in part to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased precipitation in others, changes in mountain snowpack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures.

Social and economic effects of global warming may be exacerbated by growing population densities in affected areas. Temperate regions are projected to experience some benefits, such as fewer deaths due to cold exposure. A summary of probable effects and recent understanding can be found in the report made for the IPCC Third Assessment Report by Working Group II. The newer IPCC Fourth Assessment Report summary reports that there is observational evidence for an increase in intense tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic Ocean since about 1970, in correlation with the increase in sea surface temperature (see Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), but that the detection of long-term trends is complicated by the quality of records prior to routine satellite observations. The summary also states that there is no clear trend in the annual worldwide number of tropical cyclones.

Additional anticipated effects include sea level rise of 0.18 to 0.59 meters (0.59 to 1.9 ft) in 2090-2100 relative to 1980-1999, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increasingly intense (but less frequent) hurricanes and extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, oxygen depletion in the oceans, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, as well as Lyme disease, hantavirus infections, bubonic plague, and cholera. One study predicts 18% to 35% of a sample of 1,103 animal and plant species would be extinct by 2050, based on future climate projections. However, few mechanistic studies have documented extinctions due to recent climate change and one study suggests that projected rates of extinction are uncertain.

Increased atmospheric CO₂ increases the amount of CO₂ dissolved in the oceans. CO₂ dissolved in the ocean reacts with water to form carbonic acid, resulting in ocean acidification. Ocean surface pH is estimated to have decreased from 8.25 near the beginning of the industrial era to 8.14 by 2004, and is projected to decrease by a further 0.14 to 0.5 units by 2100 as the ocean absorbs more CO₂. Since organisms and ecosystems are adapted to a narrow range of pH, this raises extinction concerns, directly driven by increased atmospheric CO₂, that could disrupt food webs and impact human societies that depend on marine ecosystem services.