New UNEP Science Report Underlines Urgency for Governments to Seal the Deal in Copenhagen

Thursday, 24 September 2009 08:24

From the Loss of Mountain Glaciers and Arctic Ice to the Acidification of Oceans—Impacts of Climate Change Coming Faster and Sooner

 

New UNEP Science Report Underlines Urgency for Governments to Seal the Deal in Copenhagen, Says UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner

 

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Washington/Nairobi, 24 September 2009 --The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) including in Europe.

 

An analysis of the very latest, peer-reviewed science indicates that many of the predictions at the upper end of the IPCC's forecasts are becoming ever more likely.

 

Meanwhile, the newly emerging science points to some events thought likely to occur in longer-term time horizons, as already happening or set to happen far sooner than had previously been thought.

 

In Europe, they include acceleration of glacier melting in the Alps and Pyrenees, the northward spread of arid conditions in the Mediterranean, and European plants moving to higher altitudes.

 

Researchers have become increasingly concerned about ocean acidification linked with the absorption of carbon dioxide in seawater and the impact on shellfish and coral reefs.

 

• Water that can corrode a shell-making substance called aragonite is already welling up along California’s coast—decades earlier than existing models predict.

 

Losses from glaciers, ice-sheets and the polar regions appears to be happening faster with the Greenland ice sheet, for example, recently seeing melting some 60 percent higher than the previous record of 1998.

 

• Some scientists are now warning that sea levels could rise by up to two metres by 2100 and five to ten times that over following centuries.

 

There is also growing concern among some scientists that thresholds or tipping points may now be reached in a matter of years or a few decades including dramatic changes to the Indian summer monsoon, the Sahara and West Africa monsoons and ones affecting a critical ecosystem like the Amazon rainforest.

 

The report also underlines concern by scientists that the planet is now committed to some damaging and perhaps irreversible impacts as a result of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

 

• Losses of tropical and temperate mountain glaciers affecting perhaps 20 percent to 25 percent of the human population in terms of drinking water, irrigation and hydro-power.

 

• Shifts in the hydrological cycle resulting in the disappearance of regional climates with related losses of ecosystems, species and the spread of drylands northwards and southwards.

 

Recent science suggests that it may still be possible to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. However, this will only happen within the time span of the current civilization if there is immediate, cohesive and decisive action to both cut emissions and assist vulnerable countries to adapt.

 

These are among the findings of a report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) entitled the Climate Change Science Compendium 2009.

 

The report, compiled in association with scientists around the world, comes with less than 80 days to go to the crucial UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

In a foreword to the document, the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who this week hosted heads of state in New York, writes, “This Climate Change Science Compendium is a wake-up call. The time for hesitation is over”.

 

“We need the world to realize, once and for all, that the time to act is now and we must work together to address this monumental challenge. This is the moral challenge of our generation.”

 

The Compendium reviews some 400 major scientific contributions to our understanding of Earth Systems and climate change that have been released through peer-reviewed literature, or from research institutions, over the last three years.

 

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said, “The Compendium can never replace the painstaking rigour of an IPCC process—a shining example of how the United Nations can provide a path to consensus among the sometimes differing views of more than 190 nations.”

 

“However, scientific knowledge on climate change and forecasting of the likely impacts has been advancing rapidly since the landmark 2007 IPCC report,” he added.

“Many governments have asked to be kept abreast of the latest findings. I am sure that this report fulfils that request and will inform ministers’ decisions when they meet in the Danish capital in only a few weeks time,” said Mr. Steiner.

 

Key scientific observations and developments documented since the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 include:

 

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• The overall volume of glacier ice in the Alps reduced by about one percent from 1975 to 2000, and has been declining by between two and three percent since the turn of the millennium.

 

• In the record glacier-melting year of 2006, Norway’s Breidalblikkbrae thinned by more than three metres, France’s Ossoue glacier by nearly that amount, and Spain’s Maladeta glacier by nearly two metres. In each case, a considerable percentage of the remaining ice thickness was lost in a single year.

 

• Measurements of glaciers in the Spanish Pyrenees showed that only 277 hectares remained in 2008, representing a loss of nearly 85% since they were first mapped in 1894. If current trends continue, it is suggested that glaciers will disappear from the Pyrenees by 2050.

 

• New research indicates that by the end of this century, the Mediterranean region will experience more severe aridity than previously estimated. The whole region, especially the southern Mediterranean, will be vulnerable to water stress and desertification, with a substantial northward expansion of dry and semi-arid lands across the Iberian, Italian, Hellenic and Turkish peninsulas. The projections correspond with actual observations of warming and drying trends.

 

• Plants in western Europe’s mountain forests shifted their optimum altitude 29 metres upwards each decade of the 20^th century. The conclusion is based on a study of the altitudinal distribution of 171 plant species in temperate and Mediterranean forests across the region.

 

The compendium also documents a number of significant recent climate anomalies for Europe, including:

 

• Most parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland experienced the warmest winter ever recorded in 2008.

 

• France and northern Spain were struck by storms with winds of 190km/hr in January 2009, the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane.

 

 

• The drought experienced on the Iberian peninsula in 2008 was the worst for more than a decade in Spain, and Portugal’s worst winter drought since 1917.

 

• Flooding in central Europe in June 2009 was the region’s worst natural disaster since 2002.

 

• In 2008, the United Kingdom experienced one of the 10 wettest summers on record.

 

GLOBAL:

 

• The growth in carbon dioxide emissions from energy and industry has exceeded even the most fossil-fuel intensive scenario developed by the IPCC in the late 1990s. Global emissions were growing by 1.1 percent each year from 1990-1999, and this accelerated to 3.5 percent per year from 2000-2007.

 

• Growth of the global economy in the early 21^st century and an increase in its carbon intensity (emissions per unit of growth), combined with a decrease in the capacity of ecosystems on land and the oceans to act as carbon “sinks”, have led to a rapid increase in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This has contributed to sooner-than-expected impacts, including faster sea level rise, ocean acidification, melting Arctic sea ice, warming of polar land masses, freshening of ocean currents and shifts in the circulation patterns of the oceans and atmosphere.

 

• The observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations are raising concern among some scientists that warming of between 1.4 and 4.3 degrees Centigrade above pre-industrial surface temperatures could occur. This exceeds the range of between 1 and 3 degrees perceived as the threshold for many “tipping points”, including the end of summer Arctic sea ice, and the eventual melting of Himalayan glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet.

 

• In 2007, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean shrank to its smallest extent ever, 24 percent less than the previous record in 2005, and 34 percent less than the average minimum extent in the period 1970-2000. In 2008, the minimum ice extent was nine percent greater than in 2007, but still the second lowest on record.

 

• Until the summer of 2007, most models projected an ice-free September for the Arctic Ocean towards the end of the current century. Reconsideration based on current trends has led to speculation that this could occur as soon as 2030.

 

• Recent findings show that warming extends well to the south of the Antarctic Peninsula, to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported.

 

• The hole in the ozone layer has had a cooling effect on Antarctica, and is partly responsible for masking expected warming on the continent. Recovery of stratospheric ozone, thanks to the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances, is projected to increase Antarctic temperatures in coming decades.

 

• Recent estimates of the combined impact of melting land-ice and thermal expansion of the oceans suggest a plausible average sea level rise of between 0.8 and 2.0 metres above the 1990 level by 2100. This compares with a projected rise of between 18 and 59 centimetres in the last IPCC report, which did not include an estimate of large-scale changes in ice-melt rates, due to lack of consensus.

 

• Under the IPCC scenario that most closely matches current trends – i.e. with the highest projected emissions – between 12 and 39 percent of the Earth’s land surface could experience previously unknown climate conditions by 2100. A similar proportion, between 10 and 48 percent, will see existing climates disappear. Many of these “disappearing climates” coincide with biodiversity hotspots, and with the added problem of fragmented habitats and physical obstructions to migration, it is feared many species will struggle to adapt to the new conditions.

 

To download the full report, visit http://www.unep.org/compendium2009/