From Adam Morton, in The Sydney Morning Herald.
KEY climate change measures are tracking near or beyond worse-case scenarios predicted just two years ago, according to a science update drawing on more than 200 recently published studies.
Co-authored by 26 climate scientists, The Copenhagen Diagnosis reports that melting of summer Arctic sea ice, loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and projections of the rise in sea levels have accelerated dramatically since 2007.
It finds the statistical global warming trend has continued over the past decade, contradicting assessments by some scientists - including Copenhagen Climate Council chairman Tim Flannery - that there has been a recent cooling.
The review cites NASA data that shows a trend of a 0.19-degree increase over the past decade despite short-term fluctuations due to El Nino, solar variability and volcanic eruptions.
Matthew England, co-director of the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre, said the world’s three leading climate data series showed claims of temperatures cooling were ”patently untrue”.
”These are the data set even the sceptics go to, and they show that the last 10 years has been one of warming even if you start in [the particularly hot] 1998,” Professor England said.
”Since 2001, every year has been among the top-10 warmest on record. I don’t think that is cooling.”
The diagnosis is billed as a supplement to the 2007 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and aimed at influencing debate at next month’s Copenhagen climate summit. Most of the scientists behind it are intergovernmental panel authors.
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Hanging tough. Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River, retreated a few dozen meters from 2004 to 2008—"hardly an abnormal retreat" that would have been expected from rising temperatures, states a provocative new report. CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): IIT MUMBAI; ISHWAR SINGH (PROVIDED BY V. K. RAINA)
From Pallava Bagla in Science.
Are Himalayan glaciers beating a rapid retreat in the face of global warming? That would seem to be the case, according to a flurry of recent reports by BBC and other mass media. But the picture is more complex—and poses scientific puzzles, according to a review of satellite and ground measurements released by India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests earlier this week.
The report, by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India, seeks to correct a widely held misimpression based on measurements of a handful of glaciers: that India’s 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers are shrinking rapidly in response to climate change. That’s not so, Raina says. Even if it were, other researchers argue that severe loss of ice mass would not entail drastic water shortages in the Indian heartland, as some fear. Both concerns were cited in the Asia chapter of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 2007 Working Group II report, which asserted that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
From John Broder, in The New York Times.
President Obama came into office pledging to end eight years of American inaction on climate change under President George W. Bush, and all year he has promised that the United States would lead the way toward a global agreement in Copenhagen next month to address the warming planet.
But this weekend in Singapore, Mr. Obama was forced to acknowledge that a comprehensive climate deal was beyond reach this year. Instead, he and other world leaders agreed that they would work toward a more modest interim agreement with a promise to renew work toward a binding treaty next year.
The admission places Mr. Obama in the awkward position of being, at least for now, as unlikely to spearhead an international effort to combat global warming as his predecessor — if for different reasons.
In Mr. Bush’s case, he remained skeptical about the science of global warming until near the end of his presidency and dubious about the need for concerted global action.
And his reluctance was echoed by a Congress that wanted to see clear commitments from developing countries like China.
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From The Economist.