WMO says temperatures up, also calls for drought indices
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Climate change and global warming are under discussion in chilly Copenhagen this week, and in Geneva the World Meteorological Organization is contributing its share of scientific data to heat up the debate. The WMO late Tuesday published its latest report on global temperature changes, which shows that “2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850.”
Some 700,000 homes along the coastline in Australia are at risk from erosion as sea levels rise: the government says it expects the level to rise by one meter within 40 years, thanks to global warming. Some homes have already lost substantial amounts of land around them, from storms but also higher water levels, reports Reuters.
Easy to understand, nicely illustrated, quick to download: the WWF pocket guide to climate change gives you the basics, painlessly, of a subject that will remain in the headlines for the rest of 2009 in the weeks leading to the Copenhagen meeting to replace the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions (if you aren’t sure you follow this, you need the guide!)
Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels. Read more…
Lake Geneva
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.
The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.
The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.
The cryosphere includes the area around the top of the Matterhorn in canton Valais
Rome, Italy (The Independent, UK) – This may come as a surprise to many Swiss, but Italy is planning to officially move the border with Switzerland. The Italian parliament is preparing a law for April that will legally change the border, fixed since 1861, redrawing the line through the cryosphere, or eternal snow area in the Alps. Melting glaciers are the primary reason.
Global warming continues to quietly take its toll, with the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica possibly the next major victim, as a strip of ice that was 100 km wide in 1950 narrows to just 500 metres at its thinnest point. The flat-topped shelf is thousands of square kilometres in area. Reuters
