We must take climate change more seriously warn Met Office scientists

Published on Sunday 5 December 2010 15:46

Dangerous climate change should be taken more seriously, scientists said today as a review of the latest science revealed clearer evidence of the impacts of rising temperatures.

A new report, published as the latest round of UN talks on tackling global warming enters their second week in Cancun, Mexico, examines evidence on dangerous climate change which has emerged since the last international review of the science.

The report, by a consortium of scientists led by the Met Office, suggested sea levels could rise higher than predicted in the last report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), without action to curb emissions.

In 2007, the IPCC said that sea levels could rise by between 21cm and 59cm by 2100 if action was not taken to cut the greenhouse gases which cause global warming. But the new review shows that sea level rises by the end of the century could exceed the upper end of that range.

However, the Met Office ruled out rises of 4m, and said that although 2m rises could not be discounted, an increase of more than 1m was unlikely by 2100.

The review said evidence was emerging of the permafrost melting, potentially allowing release of the potent greenhouse gas methane. And the study found that methane emissions from wetlands were likely to increase by between 10 per cent and 35 per cent globally for each degree the planet warms by.

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The Arctic may become ice-free during the summer earlier in the century than predicted by many of the models in the IPCC's fourth assessment report in 2007 and the rate of decline of the ice has increased slightly - though that may be down to natural variation in the weather.

But the review of recent scientific studies revealed that some impacts of climate change are likely to be less than previously thought.

Evidence casts doubt on reports that the Atlantic Ocean "conveyor belt", which affects the climate and brings warmer temperatures to western Europe, is slowing down.

And in the tropics, it has emerged that old forests still absorb CO2, making efforts to stop deforestation valuable to slowing climate change. But this also means a failure to control the deforestation of pristine old-growth forest could speed up climate change.

There is also new evidence of the susceptibility of tropical forests to drought.

The Met Office's head of climate change advice, Dr Vicky Pope, said that the latest review of the science - which comes midway between the last IPCC report and the next, due in 2013 - showed some of the risks of dangerous climate change were greater than had been thought, while others were less.

She said: "The evidence is clearer. There is a possibility of dangerous climate change and we've now got more evidence."

She said scientists understood the impacts better and so were more confident of what they were saying.She added: "Overall ,we should take dangerous climate change more seriously, not because it is more serious, but because we are more sure of it."