CO2 and temperature: a pas de deux.[CO.sub.2[ and temperature: A pas de deux pas de deux (French; “step for two”) Dance for two performers. A characteristic part of classical ballet, it includes an adagio, or slow dance, by the ballerina and her partner; solo variations by the male dancer and then the ballerina; and a coda, or In a finding that may have ominous implications for greenhouse warning forecasts, scientists report that carbon dioxide carbon dioxide, chemical compound, CO2, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that is about one and one-half times as dense as air under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. levels and equatorial temperatures perform a close dance, moving in tandem Adv. 1. in tandem - one behind the other; "ride tandem on a bicycle built for two"; "riding horses down the path in tandem" tandem to an as-yet-unknown rhythm. J. Brad Marston from Cornell University Cornell University, mainly at Ithaca, N.Y.; with land-grant, state, and private support; coeducational; chartered 1865, opened 1868. It was named for Ezra Cornell, who donated $500,000 and a tract of land. With the help of state senator Andrew D. in Ithaca, N.Y., and his colleagues at the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of City-based Environmental Defense Fund compared a 30-year record of carbon dioxide concentrations to a record of average monthly temperatures for different regions of the globe. They found a close statistical relationship between the carbon dioxide measurements and equatorial temperatures: The two tended to rise and fall together, with changes in the greenhouse gas lagging several months behind the fluctuations in equatorial sea temperatures, the researchers report in the Feb. 14 NATURE. This suggests that the temperature changes cause the short-term variations in carbon dioxide, or that both respond to some other meteorological me·te·or·ol·o·gy n. The science that deals with the phenomena of the atmosphere, especially weather and weather conditions. [French météorologie, from Greek force, Marston says. The findings provide empirical evidence for an idea raised long ago: That rising temperatures will cause the land surface or ocean to release stored carbon dioxide -- an effect that tends to push temperatures even higher. Scientiests call this kind of relationship a positive feedback. The feedback studied by Marston's group works over relatively short periods, each lasting a few years. He says it is important to determine whether the same feedback also operates over several decades. If so, that would raise the possibility that increasing temperatures will cause a massive surge in carbon dioxide levels, driving temperatures to even higher levels than those currently predicted by climate models. |
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