Climate Scientists Say Destabilization Much Worse than IPCC Reporting

Related subjects: Carbon Emissions, Climate Change, Environment & Ecology, Sustainable Development, U.S. Environment Comments (1)

1 December 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

A group of 26 climate scientists, including 14 members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN-backed world-leading climate science peer-review institution, are now reporting that climate destabilization is occurring much faster than the IPCC’s landmark reports have so far shown. The Copenhagen Diagnosis report finds that greenhouse gas emissions are expanding rapidly, now 40% higher than in 1990, and that a combination of information regarding solar intensity and carbon emissions increases shows clear evidence that ongoing warming is the result of human industrial activity.

The report assesses the most recent peer-reviewed climate-science research, and finds that the destabilization of global climate systems is dramatically worse than the IPCC’s landmark report, put together in 2005, reported. On emissions, the Copenhagen Diagnosis report finds that if emissions trends continue unabated, even with zero emissions worldwide after 2030, the risk of a 2ºC or higher increase in global average temperatures, over pre-industrial levels, will go up. Such an increase would have climate destabilizing effects that are beyond most “worst-case scenario” projections.

The report also finds that ice-melt is accelerating, with “Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. This area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.” The melting of ice shelves in Greenland and Antarctica is also accelerating, as is the melting of glaciers in North America, Africa and the Himalayas.

This accelerated melting is visible in satellite imagery and is also contributing to the accelerating rise in sea levels worldwide. The 2005 IPCC report had foreseen an average annual sea-level rise for the period 1993-2008 of 1.9 millimeters per year (mm/yr). The Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009 report reveals that up-to-date scientific research shows a 3.4 mm/yr rise in global sea levels. According to the report, “This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.”

Concern that doubling of rates in ice-melt will continue to contribute to a spiraling global melting trend informs debate about the urgent need for action to curb emissions, slow warming, and if possible, reverse the process of accelerating ice-melt. A review of Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment has found that current melting trends are consistent with a global sea level rise of as much as 1.4 meters by the year 2100.

That degree of sea-level rise would directly impact hundreds of millions of people across the world, destroying crop land, inundating coastal cities, however gradually the rising waters came, wiping out small island nations, and displacing unprecedented numbers of people. Recent studies have also confirmed a link between rising sea levels and the melting of glacial ice. As glaciers retreat, major river systems and irrigation channels are being deprived of the natural glacial sources that feed them, potentially leading to a global fresh water scarcity crisis and a very real threat to the global food supply.

The report also finds that:

If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2^oC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO₂ and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO₂ by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.

The new research highlights the urgent need to reduce emissions and transition to a zero-combustion economy. Pres. Barack Obama’s fixed emissions reduction targets for the US aim for only a 17% reduction by 2020, but more than 80% reduction by 2050. Such responses are needed at Copenhagen, in order to ensure there is a coordinated international effort to phase out harmful greenhouse-effect inducing emissions and guard against irreversible climate destabilization.