SCIENCE FILE: An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment. : Journal Reports New Evidence That Earth Will Keep Warming

A new model of global warming that includes sulfates--byproducts of power plants that reflect sunlight and counteract warming--shows that the Earth’s climate will continue to heat up until the entire world is warmer in 2050, British meteorologists report in the journal Nature. “We predict a future global mean warming of 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade for greenhouse gases alone, or 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit per decade with sulfate aerosol forcing included,” the report said.

Critics of global warming theory have said current models do not successfully reflect what has happened in the past, and thus should not be used to predict weather patterns. But Tim Johns and colleagues at Britain’s Meteorological Office in Bracknell found that including sulfates in the model brought it much closer to reality.