Warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made, says Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- by: Malcolm Holland
- From: News Limited Network
- September 27, 2013 7:06PM
The IPCC says a human footprint can be found in the warming of the atmosphere and oceans, in rising sea levels, melting snow and ice and in changes in some climate extremes. Picture: AFP/ University of Washington/Ian Joughin. Source: AFP
THE latest major report on climate change by the United Nations says the world is on track to become hotter by 2C by 2100 and that it is more certain than ever that human activity is the main cause of global warming.
Compiled by scientists from around the world and released Friday evening Sydney time in Stockholm, Sweden, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment paints a gloomy outlook.
It says the earth’ average surface temperatures has increased by 0.85C since 1880.
It says it is now ”extremely likely” — with a 95 per cent certainty — that humans rather than natural variations, are the dominant cause global of warming.
The report says sea levels are expected to rise between 26cm and 8cm by 2100.
It says “with high confidence” that a slow down in warming in the past decade was because the ocean has absorbed 90 per cent of the extra heat generated by human activity between 1971 and 2010
If emissions from human activities remain high, the IPCC report predicts that the world is on track to warm by more than 2C, and possibly by more than 4C, by 2100.
The IPCC said its latest report was based on multiple and independent evidence, much of which is new since the IPCC’s previous report in 2007.
The new report warns heatwaves will be more common and last longer and most wet regions will get more rainfall.
Most dry areas of the earth will become dryer, the report says.
The report says that since 1850, each of the last three decades has been warmer than any preceding decade.
The last 30 years have been the warmest since 600AD, and that between 1901 to 2010, the sea level rose by 19cm.
This rise was quicker than the average sea level rise for the last 2000 years.
It says greenhouse gases have reached levels unseen in at least 800,000 years. The cause, it says, is fossil fuel emissions and land use.
The ocean has also become more acidic as it absorbs a third of the carbon dioxide being emitted.
Critics of the IPCC report have said it still fails to properly take into account the earth’s heat varies because of natural climate cycles.