Global warming ‘already disrupting’ world’s climate
“There is no longer any doubt that the Earth’s climate is changing,” said Dennis Tirpak chairman of the conference titled Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.
“Globally, nine of the past 10 years have been the warmest since records began in 1861,” he said. “Rising greenhouse gases are affecting rainfall patterns and the global water cycle.”
Tirpak singled out the heat wave that gripped western Europe in 2003 as an example. Europe’s worst natural disaster in 50 years killed as many as 30,000 people.
“Since the 1970s, climatic warming has increased the extent and frequency of droughts over land,” he said. “Terrestrial ecological systems are shifting and marine systems are changing, all with outcomes that are difficult to predict.”
In temperate parts of Asia, “recurring incidence of floods and droughts is already apparent,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s scientific authority on global warming.
British scientist Chris Rapley said melting ice from Antarctica was already accounting for at least 15% of the two-millimetre annual rise (0.06 inches) in the global sea level due to warming.
In the Antarctic peninsula, there has been three ice shelf break-ups in the last 10 years, including the creation of the Larsen B iceberg, a Luxembourg-sized behemoth that is the biggest floating object in the world.
If Antarctica melted, it would boost global sea levels by some 120 metres (390 feet).
That warning was underscored by a study about the risk of a meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, something that would raise global sea levels by seven metres (22.75 feet) if it were lost completely. The ice sheet could start to contract when local temperatures warm by more than 2.7C (4.8F) compared with the present.
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