IPCC issues warning on global warming

The Nobel winning Inter Governmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) group of climate scientist issued their starkest warning yet on global warning. IPCC declared that the impact of global warming could be "abrupt or irreversible" and no country would be spared. The new report is intended to act as a guide to policy makers for years to come. It summarizes three massive assessments publishes this year on the evidence for global warming its impact and the options for tackling the emissions that causes it. Retreating glaciers and loss of alpine snow, thinning arctic summer sea ice and thawing permafrost show that climate change is already on the march.

By 2100 global average surface temperature could rise by between 1.1C and 6.4C compared to 1980-99 levels. Sea level will rise by atleast18 centimeters. An earlier estimate of an upper limit of 59 centimeters does not take into account "uncertainties" about the impact of disrupted carbon cycles and melting ice-sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, the new report says. Heat waves, rainstorms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level are among the events expected to become more frequent, more widespread or more intense this century. "All countries" will be affected by climate change but those in the forefront are poor nations especially small island states and developing economies where hundreds of millions of people live in low-line deltas.

 

The Hindu, November 19^th  2007